


Necropolis

by wiltedpleasures



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gotham AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4795478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedpleasures/pseuds/wiltedpleasures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batwoman begins her daily night watch at her usual post on the edge of the Verger Tower until one night, she meets another vigilante of the night: Nightwing.<br/>Gotham AU with Alana and Margot along with other supporting characters from Hannibal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. an introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Give me ALL the AUs for these two, because I am always down for AUs. For this series, I will be using the new 52 version of Nightwing's costume. I love the black and blue suit, but come on, red is so Alana's color. Also, fun fact, Necropolis is Greek for "city of the dead".

It was a fairly peaceful night, _as peaceful as Baltimore allows_ , Batwoman notes as she surveillances the scenery from the edge of the looming Verger Tower. Zooming in with her night vison radar detector built into her mask, she spots suspicious activity over on the building to her right, a private psychiatry practice. The guardian of the night can see two large bodies, along with a third smaller body crouched behind an AC unit.

Curiosity gets the best of the woman, so she spreads open her glider wings, built into her cape, and glides on over. The loud crunch of the gravel causes the two rooftop goons to turn around abruptly, guns raised. With a snap, the glider wings clip back into place and Batwoman raises her head slowly, revealing her built in scowl in her mask.

“What the fu-“ one of the thugs starts before Batwoman slides across the gravel, kicking the the man’s knees, snapping them instantly.

She hears the trigger click before the bullet leaves the barrel of the other man’s gun, she is already propelling her body off the floor and jumps up to connect her fist with his face but something stops her. Not something, some _one_.

 “Looks like you could use a hand,” the other figure states, twisting the last thug’s hand, bones cracking and breaking as his gun clatters to the ground.

 Batwoman narrows her eyes, her green eyes visible within the black eye makeup beneath her mask. “I had him covered. I work better alone,” she states, pursing her lips.

The other body, _a woman,_ Batwoman notices instantly, just stands and smiles. Batwoman openly takes in her appearance, she had never seen this woman before. Her body, curves covered in what appeared to be mostly black kevlar material, except for the strip of red across her chest and arms. Her face wasn’t completely visible, her eyes were covered with a black and white mask, completely shielding her eyes. The white of her eye mask shined like the city’s skyline, it must be some type of high-tech radar equipment.

Batwoman’s trance is broken once the woman grinds her tool into the gravel, a single black escrima stick, with red LED lights built in at the ends. “My eyes are up here,” she says teasingly, tapping a finger against the edge of her eye mask.

“Sorry. I couldn’t tell,” Batwoman replies, turning on her heel to prepare for takeoff on the rooftop edge, leaving the thugs groaning and whimpering in pain.

“Well unlike some people, I’d like to keep a somewhat incognito appearance.” The other woman twirls her slim cylinder tool in between her fingers as she saddles up on the edge next to the dark knight, her cape billowing in the wind.

Batwoman turns to face her, lips pursing again. “What makes you think I don’t appreciate keeping my identity anonymous?” she asks, having to look down at the other woman slightly due to their height difference.

The other woman grins, teeth as white as her mask. “Your eyes. I can see them. Not complaining or anything, because they’re gorgeous. The eyes symbolize a gateway to the soul, so you can see my confusion as to why you’re so open to share them when you don’t want people to know who you are,” the woman explains, resting her weight on her tool, tapping a single finger on the shaft as she waits for an answer.

The woman in question looks down at the woman’s hand, her middle finger and ring finger a striking red among the black material. Batwoman finds herself searching for an imprint of a ring under the suit's material, but shakes her head at the thought and turns to study the city’s activity once again. “I like to have my eyes fully open. Blindness frightens me,” she admits, worrying for a moment if she revealed too much. There was something about this woman, her appearance and mannerisms was positively infectious.

“Bats are blind, according to a common myth. You’re full of contradictions aren’t you?” the woman teases, grinning once again. Batwoman finds herself trying to smother a smile, gritting her teeth and clenching her jaw.

 “I suppose so,” she replies cooly, her voice as collected as the voice editor built inside her mask. Her eyes meet the other woman’s once again.

“What’s your symbol? I’ve shown you mine,” Batwoman says, allowing her lips to quirk up for a smirk.

 The other woman returns the smile, bringing her weapon up and cracking it open from the middle, revealing two slightly smaller escrima sticks. “A bird, I suppose if I must put a name on it. The name is Nightwing, by the way,” she answers before jumping down on the fire escape below. Batwoman looks down expectantly, only finding the other woman gliding across a laundry line using her escrima sticks.

_Nightwing_ , Batwoman thinks, mentally tasting the name. With a shake of disbelief from her head and a snap of her cape, the caped crusader heads back for the Verger Tower for her usual watch post of the night.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot awoke with a groan, her body aching with pain from the previous activities of the night. She turns her head, two aspirins and a glass of water meeting her on the bedside table. Cordell, the family butler, must have left them for her. She rises from the bed slowly, muscles contracting and bones cracking from sleep.

Gulping down the water and medicine, she stalks over to her bedroom window, overlooking the front yard of the Verger manor. She spots an unfamiliar vehicle, a marked police car parked in the gravel driveway. That’s odd. Margot allows herself for a quick shower and throws on presentable clothes: a long sleeved button-down shirt, a long black pencil skirt to hide looming bruises and makeup to cover her facial injuries in order to avoid unwanted questions and suspicions from her guests.

Cordell meets her at the bottom of the stairs, where her two guests are waiting. “Good morning, I’m Margot Verger. What can I help you with?” she says in greeting, false smile in place.

The two bodies turn to face her now, the man meeting her eyes instantly as the woman, smaller in height than the man and resting one hand on a cane, takes a little more time to study the family mural on the wall. Her blue eyes widen slightly once her eyes lock with Margot’s, mouth a gape slightly before shutting it with a knowing smile.

Margot resists the urge to narrow her eyes but shakes the man’s hand, taller in height. “I’m Commissioner Jack Crawford and this is my partner Doctor Alana Bloom. We’re here to talk about the suspicious events involving your brother at one of your family’s warehouses last night.”

Margot raises her eyebrows. “Suspicious events?” she echoes, genuinely confused now. _What had Mason gotten himself into now?_

“There has been an accident, Ms. Verger. Your brother is at the Baltimore State Hospital if you’d like to see him, we can take you to him. We just have some questions regarding him if you’d like to help us understand his previous whereabouts,” Doctor Bloom says, smiling reassuringly to Margot.

_I’d rather not_ , Margot thinks to herself. Any day she could avoid seeing her brother she’d accept gladly.

Margot nods anyways, Cordell grabbing her coat and helping her into it. “I’ll help as much as I can,” she lies, she actually wasn’t aware of Mason’s location due to her other nightly responsibilities. She searches the woman’s face, Dr. Bloom still smiling. _Yes_ , she was _sure_ she had seen that infectious smile before.

Setting her lips into her own knowing smile as she leaves the house, Margot trails slowly behind the duo. The last thought she has before Doctor Bloom shuts the car door behind her is that Alana has a very lovely taste in black and red suits, both day and _night._


	2. the aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margot views the aftermath of Mason's incident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was re-watching some of Mason's scenes during season 2 for inspiration and Michael Pitt would make a superb Joker and a lot of people seemed to agree. His little mannerisms are spot. ON.

Margot didn’t know what to expect when she walked into Mason’s hospital suite but she definitely wasn’t expecting _this_. The younger sister doesn’t know what to focus on, there’s too many issues on his face alone. Mason’s thin hair remained mostly intact, tousled up in all directions only now his hair was bleached nearly lime green.

Margot turns to Alana, eyes widened in alarm. “What on earth happened to him?”

Alana glances at the older Verger brother’s sleeping form then back to Margot’s widened eyes. “He was pushed into the chemical harbor of the Verger warehouse, the chemicals used for packaging. The doctors say you can try to dye his hair back, but his skin will remain like this for life.” Alana breaks their train of eyesight to readjust her cane on the tile floor. “Unfortunately,” she adds as an afterthought.

Her brother’s skin, etched with dozens of wrinkles and ripples, was taunt in some areas and loose in others from the acidic liquid settling into his skin. She had noticed what Alana was talking about, his skin appeared nearly bleach white due to the warehouse’s chemicals. Margot grits her teeth at the sight, _he’s done worse to my own skin_.

 She turns to Jack now, crossing her arms. “I suspect you have already gathered the surveillance camera footage, correct?” she asks, locking eyes with Jack’s brown ones.

“When we gathered a team at the warehouse, the cameras were missing. The footage was either stolen or destroyed. That’s why Dr. Bloom and I wanted to talk to you, we want to know if you think there is anybody who would want to hurt your brother,” he asks, gesturing for her to sit down on the chair closest to the bed. She subtly scoots the chair a little further away, acting as if she was merely trying to get comfortable. Who would want to get rid of Mason? Besides herself?

“I really don’t know, I’m sure he may have some jealous friends or co-workers, that’s a given with the Verger fortune. I’m sure you are already aware of his ego, which that alone can attract some enemies. But I doubt any of those factors would contribute to this. We have security, he never leaves the house without a guard. I wish I could help you in some way,” Margot says, chin trembling a little for effect. Jack offers a comforting pat to her shoulder, Alana pursing her lips a little, studying the woman.

“That’s quite alright Ms. Verger. We will figure this out. At the FBI, we have loads of profilers skilled at finding people who are capable of doing things like this,” Jack offers, gesturing to Mason on the bed.

Suddenly, flashes and camera clicks come in through the hospital hallway window, Alana turns to shut the blinds and Jack goes outside to deal with the reporters.

“Sorry I couldn’t be much of service,” Margot says, turning away from the woman to look at her unconscious brother.

Alana stands next to her, her cane clicking with each step. “That’s okay. I figured you wouldn’t be home last night,” Alana replies, watching Mason take each raspy breath with an oxygen tube down his throat. Margot’s eyes widen slightly, was this woman really going to talk about _that_ now?

Alana turns her head to meet the slightly taller woman’s eyes, sparkling with mischief. “With you being Baltimore’s busiest socialite and all. What was it, a charity function? A ball or gala? I never have figured out the difference between those two.”

Margot exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She _had_ to know the truth, Alana had been acting strange around her this whole morning with her knowing smiles and same mannerisms from the previous night.

Alana wordlessly taps a blunt nail, painted red, against her cane handle, expecting a reply. “There really isn’t a difference, I suppose. It’s all just a bunch of old wealthy drunk people in ugly dresses,” Margot replies dully.

The older woman laughs softly at her answer as Margot walks over to the window, looking down and watching as security escorts one reporter out the automatic hospital doors. “So this really is a big deal. What’s this guy’s name? The Baltimore Slayer?”

She hears Alana before she feels her, her cane clicking clacking. Margot wonders how that woman could be so flexible at night, she saw with her own eyes last night Nightwing slide down a laundry line on a fire escape. “Nameless so far. I have my own name for him, but it’s for my ears only. No one would believe me anyway, for all they know, I slipped off my apartment balcony.”

Margot raises her eyebrows, _so that explains the need for the cane_. Intense physical therapy perhaps allowed for her nighttime activities. For all she knew, Alana could just be using the cane as a crutch, allowing all suspicions for her identity to not be on Nightwing. “You didn’t slip, did you?” Margot asks, turning around to face the slightly shorter woman.

Alana had been standing behind her the whole time, gauging her reaction. They wordlessly study each other, Alana really did have the most beautiful blue eyes. _She should show them more often_ , Margot thinks, they’d look stunning in the reflection of the city’s lights at night.

Alana shakes her head solemnly, tightening her grip slightly on her cane. “I was pushed. By the same man who did this to your brother. I was heavily sedated of course, but I caught a glimpse of him on the way down. There’s not a doubt in my mind that he did this to your brother,” Alana explains, looking back at the mutilated form resting on the bed.

“Who?” Margot asks, having an inkling at the name the other woman was about to say. Alana’s pure blue eyes rest back on hers, jaw settling. “Scarecrow.”

 _Scarecrow_ , Margot mentally tasting the name. Yes, she _has_ heard of that name before. Only a few events here and there, popping up on her GPS tracker built into the three large computer monitors back in the underground cave at the Verger manor. He was a man who wore luxury suits for a body but had a hideous mask for a face, one that truly resembled a scarecrow face. The villain was known for gassing his victims with a special type of concoction, handmade, to frighten his victims with horrific hallucinations and terrors before kidnaping them, killing them, and eating the body. Margot had been disgusted at the images she found as she researched him, she saw pictures of human flesh staked up on scarecrow pillars on the outskirts of town, images courtesy of Freddie Lounds of the Baltimore Tattle Crime newspaper. She widens her eyes at the other woman, processing what Alana went through. She had remembered reading about her “accident” in the news a while back.

“You must be thinking how I am not propped up dead in a corn field right now. I often think about that too. I think with certain victims, people he clearly is intrigued with, he leaves alone after the right amount of torture. The right amount of pain. Myself, your brother, we have something he likes. Possibly wants,” Alana notes, shifting her gaze past Margot’s head and out the window. Ms. Lounds is now huffing and stomping her way to her car, her red curls blowing in the wind as she adjusts her camera strap on her shoulder.

“I don’t think its money, perhaps it’s more personality wise,” Margot murmurs under her breath, walking back over to the bed. She remembered another victim just two months ago, another egotistic man who’d Mason would get along with swimmingly: Frederick Chilton. His body was found alive in the fountain outside the City Hall, his entire right side of his body burned to a crisp and quivering with terrors.

Margot would not put Alana Bloom among the arrogant and self-centered men like Mason Verger and Frederick Chilton. Alana is compassionate, but not weak. Alana is brilliantly intelligent, but not conceited about it.

“Maybe you know him personally. He’s just good at hiding it,” Margot says, voicing her thoughts to Alana.

The other woman sets her jaw, looking down at the ground. Her mood had shifted entirely at the mention of this man. “I refuse to be blind, I will find him. We deserve that much. For myself. For you. For your brother,” she promises, not so much for the last part but it makes Margot smile nonetheless.

Before Alana excuses herself to go find Jack, Margot stops her with a gentle touch to her arm. “I believe you,” Margot says softly, Alana replying with a little smile before turning on her heel and leaving Margot to study Mason.

She appreciates the sudden turn in events, she is so used to his watchful stalking stare amongst the Verger mansion halls but now, she gets to openly watch him.

He stirs after a few moments, croaking out Margot’s name along with a slur of profanities, cursing whoever did this to him. “Did you see it too, Margot?” he slurs, voice thick from sleep and the material of the oxygen tube.

She huffs out a frustrated sigh. “See what, Mason?”

His head plops back on the pillows, his green hair scratching against the cheap material. “The bats,” he answers, attempting to laugh hysterically but his saliva and oxygen tube prevents it, causing him to convulse with gargled chokes.

Margot doesn’t even bother to take the time to process his response, sighing heavily before repeatedly hitting the call button beside his bed for the nurse. She mentally makes a note to research how long the effects of Scarecrow’s gas last once she returns back to the Verger manor.


	3. an evening propostion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batwoman shares another evening encounter with Nightwing.

Margot was mentally and physically running on empty, and she hadn’t even gotten into her suit for the night yet. She pushes her glasses up higher on her nose, her contacts had been bothering her lately, as she scans the article on Alana’s accident for the hundredth time of the hour: _Dr. Alana Bloom, of Baltimore, was found at the bottom of her town brownstone’s steps, incoherent and severely injured, slipping from her balcony after enjoying a night out with friends. Foul play does not seem to be a factor as this case has been ruled an accident._ Margot scoffs at this, angrily clicking out of the Tattle Crime article. Here she was, getting flustered over Freddie Lounds and her words. She had no doubt in her mind that Freddie was probably desperately hounding her editor about an interview with Alana and now her brother for more details about their incidents, due to them possibly being linked.

These past few days, Margot had tried to be patient with her brother shortly after he was released from the Baltimore State Hospital, but he had still been in hysterics. According to the few articles she read, the Scarecrow’s gas left the victims in terrors and inaudible for a week maximum. Mason had been home for two and a half, but then again, this _is_ Mason Verger.

Usually, she avoids his room altogether but he makes Cordell wheel him into the stables one afternoon, raving to her about his new healing process as she tries to pretend she’s interested. “You know how fun it is to light up the pigs in the pen? I’ve tried it on myself a few times, you really ought to give it a go, Margot. It’d bring some color to your face,” he proposes with a wicked grin, his teeth perfectly white and straight amongst his wrinkly lips. Before she can even question what the hell he is talking about, Mason grabs for the stun stick hanging up on the wall, used to herd his personal pigs into their pen, before tasing himself repeatedly in the leg.

Margot widens her eyes, attempting to snatch the weapon out of his hands before he severely hurts himself but he smacks it against her calf, the skin beneath her riding Jodhpurs burning intensely. “Mason! Stop!” she shrieks, kicking the tool out of his hand with the bottom of her boot, her weight snapping it in half.

He throws his head back and laughs, his green hair sticking up in all directions as his whole body convulses with electricity. Suddenly, he attempts to rise out of his wheelchair, wobbling and stumbling with each step as if he were drunk. He approaches Margot, reaching a hand out to pat her on the shoulder, Margot resists the urge to shrivel away from his touch.

“You’re gonna regret that, sis,” is all he replies, pressing a quick peck to her cheek as he hobbles out of the stables. Margot nearly dashes to her private little cave beneath the mansion, to scrub away his lingering touch on her cheek until the skin breaks.

The young woman found complete comfort in her little hiding spot, due to the family property being built on a large hill, housing a well-sized cave inside. While Mason still had the Verger fortune, Papa made sure of that, that didn’t stop her from finding her own footing at the family company. She learned how to buy proper stock from wealthy friends with wealthy brokers for fathers from boarding school and her appearances at many of Baltimore’s finest charity galas and functions also allowed for her own public identity and wealth. The underground cave was already well-suited for her needs anyway, previous Verger generations used it for cattle and pork shipping back in the 1900s. Margot came across it years ago as a hiding spot to get away from Mason, he’d been too much of a coward to actually chase her. The whole reason she chose the symbol of bat, contrary to what Nightwing believes, is due to her ability to indirectly bring fear into her brother’s eyes.

She’d had only fairly recently started her Batwoman routine, within the past year to be exact. After silently amassing her own money, Mason hardly noticing a dip in the ridiculous amount of money the Verger family had to their name, allowing her to create her own sense of self. Her own separate identity, entirely separate from the Verger name. She may not be CEO of her family’s company, but she had something of her own. She had the ability to create something good out of a city so evil and dark. Admittedly, it all started with petty crimes: beating up disgusting men in equally disgusting alleyways, running after purse thieves, some car chases here and there. Now, the stakes were even higher with Scarecrow out lurking in Baltimore somewhere. Especially since she saw what he was capable of, through Alana and now Mason.

Did she really care about Mason, though? Out of all the known Scarecrow victims, she found herself seriously contemplating. Chilton was nearly a stranger to her, only running into the man a few times at some charity function to raise awareness on mental health for his facility at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, the hospital in dire need of renovations due to it being built on the outskirts of town, running rampant with damages and disease.

Chilton was known for embezzling money from his institution, which was probably the main reason the asylum was in shambles. No, she didn’t particularly care that much for Mr. Chilton.

Mason, the only family she has? The person who has abused her mercilessly all throughout her life? Who has taken away nearly everything good in her life? No, she didn’t find herself feeling very sympathetic towards his recent predicament.

But _Alana_ , a person who Margot could see had done nothing to deserve this random act of violence. Her incident may be ruled as an accident, due to it being not as horrific as being thrown into a pit of acid chemicals or the entire right side of human flesh getting burned away, but Margot found herself believing the woman.

Turning away from her thoughts, she is forced to stare at her reflection in the dead computer monitors. Her glasses were askew, her wavy brunette hair was rumpled, and she had very noticeable bags under her eyes. She was running on six cups of coffee Cordell sends her down daily, but she was still exhausted. Suddenly, a notification beeps at her from her computer, a robbery five minutes away. With a sigh, she heads over to her uniform glass case, rising from a hidden crevice in a nearby cave wall.

 

* * *

 

 

She arrives to the scene, opting for her motorbike rather than her car, in a little under three minutes. Parking the bike in a dim alley, she uses her grapple gun to rise up to the rooftop, her radar detecting the criminals had chased their way up to the roof. What the menaces of society were expecting to find as a way of escape once they reached there, she had no clue. There’s a reason why idiots make horrible criminals.

With a snap, she clips her grapple gun back into place on her utility belt and scans for the thugs. “Already taken care of,” a soft yet confident voice murmurs behind her.

She turns swiftly on her boot heel, batarang in hand and ready for aim. Once she spots the culprit behind the voice, Batwoman resists rolling her eyes as she places her weapon back inside her utility belt pouch, Nightwing laughing softly into the night, her breath puffing in the cool evening air.

“Thanks but like I said before, I had them covered,” she says, subtly pressing a button on her belt to activate her voice change editor inside her mask. Nightwing’s face falters a little, she hadn’t expected that. Batwoman wonders briefly if this encounter of the night will be different from last time, due to Alana acting so strange around her at the hospital.

Nightwing shrugs, leaning against an AC unit, twirling her escrima stick in her hand. It was a comfortable silence, the only noise coming from the nearby whimpers from the thugs, tied to a fire escape with one of Nightwing’s other escrima stick’s built in wire.

“Care to tell me why you have a sudden interest in my job?” Batwoman asks, sauntering over to the AC unit to join the other woman.

Nightwing quirks her lips into a smile, pausing her stick mid-twirl. “Your job? I didn’t realize it had your name on it,” she remarks, shifting her weapon into the ground to rest her weight on it.

Batwoman clears her throat, raising her head slightly to the sky, revealing her bat symbol glowing in the night.

Nightwing notices and laughs again. “I need to invest in one of those,” she notes, stepping a little closer now that the other woman is standing next to her.

“You must build a reputation first, I’m afraid. You’re still a newbie,” Batwoman says, allowing herself to smile a little.

“A newbie, huh?” she echoes, nudging her shoulder playfully into the other woman’s, wincing a little. “Damn, what is this thing made out of? Steel?” she asks, rubbing a hand to her shoulder.

Batwoman’s smile falters a little, worried she might have accidently hurt the woman. Nightwing sees this and she grins, tapping her tool against Batwoman’s calf lightly. “I knew there was a heart in there, you’re not as dark and gloomy as everyone makes you out to be,” she notes, tongue sticking out between her shining teeth slightly.

“I didn’t take you as an avid reader of the Tattle Crime,” the dark knight muses, adjusting her head on the surface behind her. The shorter woman shrugs, stepping away to walk over to the building’s edge.

“I’m not. I just read it to catch up on my image. Building a reputation,” she explains, turning her head and grinning at the last part.

Batwoman’s eyes widen slightly. “You listen to me,” she notes, mostly to herself.

“Of course I do. I like to think we’d make a great team, you and I,” Nightwing proposes, smile still intact. Batwoman wonders if she’d see hopeful eyes behind that mask, remembering how blue they truly were underneath.

“Do you?” she asks, coming closer, her height towering a little due to their height difference and her thick suit boots. The other woman’s face is clearly visible now, due to how close they are to the bright LED city lights. Batwoman feels the urge to trace the other woman’s prominent exposed jawline but clenches her fist under her cape.

Nightwing nods. “We help each other with these pathetic little crimes. I can’t help but imagine what we’d be like with bigger issues Baltimore has to offer.”

Batwoman looks down at the ground, only a few people out and about on the city sidewalk at such a late hour, silently wondering if Scarecrow is among them.

“Doesn’t Baltimore deserve that much? To sleep easier knowing local terrors and horrors are locked away? Don’t we deserve that?” Nightwing asks, a little more passionately. Batwoman’s eyes widen slightly at Nightwing’s words, Alana really wasn’t trying to be subtle about her identity in front of her.

“I’ll let you think about it,” is all the other woman says just as Batwoman looks up again, seeing the black and red sleek body sprint away to jump onto the next building into the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sexual tension between these two is KILLING. ME. You have no idea how infuriating it is to write out their little rooftop dates all while I just want to scream at them "KISS, YOU FOOLS! KISS!".


	4. the lady in red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margot encounters an unexpected guest at the Verger charity gala.

The next time Margot encounters Alana is by surprise. She awakes to loud knocking on the grand oak front door, Cordell nowhere to be found, so she throws on her thin silk robe and grumbles her way down the stairs. “Wha- Oh. Hello,” Margot greets surprisingly, wiping off any trace of annoyance once she sees Dr. Bloom.

Alana turns to face her, observing the intricate design of the hedges in the front garden. “Good morning, Margot. I’m here for your brother, he agreed to answer a few questions regarding his case,” Alana explains, smiling at the other woman. She notices her pajamas, a simple black silk short nightgown, and Margot instinctively tightens her robe around her middle. “I didn’t wake you did I?” she asks, face etched in concern for a moment.

“No, you didn’t. Just enjoying this lazy Sunday,” Margot tosses over her shoulder, letting Alana in through the door.

“It’s Tuesday,” Alana interjects amusedly, Margot rolling her eyes.

“Right, of course. I’m just really busy lately with the Verger charity gala coming up I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Margot lies, offering a little smile. Alana returns it, looking at the large family mural in the foyer. She studies Mason’s profile for a moment, examining it with slightly narrowed eyes. Margot takes advantage of this, observing Alana’s form. She has opted for a gray suit today, with thin white stripes and a white vest underneath. She sees Alana start to turn again so she snaps her eyes back to Alana’s, smiling innocently.

“How is that going? The gala?” Alana asks politely.

“Fine, for the most part. Being the only girl around here leaves me with doing most of the work, Mason of course can’t be bothered. It’s for a good cause and that’s all that matters I suppose,” Margot answers with a sigh.

Alana replies with a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure that’s not all you’re good for, organizing little parties and what not,” Alana says, offering a little comforting squeeze to Margot’s biceps. The younger woman tries to suppress a smirk when she sees Alana’s eyes slightly widen impressively at her muscles under her thin robe.

She removes her hand quickly and shifts her gaze to her cane, acting as if she was adjusting it on the marble flooring of the mansion’s foyer. “Will you please let your brother know I’m here?”

Margot stifles a sigh, Mason already taking over the attention of the one person she had been wanting to talk to for days. Their encounters were always cut short, especially their ones of the evening. She takes Alana to her brother anyway, wordlessly padding through the empty halls.

They arrive to her brother’s office, Margot a little hesitant outside the door. “After his accident, Mason lately has been…acting a little inappropriately. More than usual. It may just be the side effects of the gas I don’t know but-“ Margot tries to explain but Alana rests her hand on top of hers, stopping her words.

 “I’ll be fine, I’ve got him covered,” she says knowingly, smiling reassuringly at the other woman.

“Don’t hesitate to let Cordell or myself know if you have any questions or need any help with anything. I’ll be right around the corner,” she says turning away of her heel slowly, watching the other woman from over her shoulder. Margot watches for a few moments after the large office door is shut, twisting her robe’s waistband tie anxiously. She had seen the other woman beat up thugs even bigger than Mason, why was she worried? Mason wouldn’t do anything to a stranger, he saves his violence for her own body.

With a shake of her head, Margot turns back for her bedroom, looking out the window until she sees Alana head out the door and walks back to her car, all in one piece an hour later. Breathing a sigh of relief, she flops back down on her pillows, intending to sleep in for a few more hours before getting ready for the gala tonight.

 

* * *

 

 

The gala had been going smoothly so far, the only downside seemed to be Margot’s facial muscles had been aching from how much of a fake smile she had to recreate throughout the whole night, introducing herself to people she couldn’t care less about. She had to suppress a gag every time someone mentioned Mason and his recovery, Margot faking a sympathetic smile and a heartfelt response. She wasn’t sure if her brother was planning on coming to the event she organized, but she made it a masquerade theme just in case so he didn’t frighten the guests with his scarred face.

The theme was also green, her whole point of the gala was to raise ecofriendly awareness to the Verger company and its warehouses to prevent unnecessary accidents like Mason’s from happening. She was about to mention this to a guest, whose back was currently turned and looking down from the stairwell of the elegant ballroom Margot had rented. The guest was wearing a sleek black suit that showed off the curves of their body well, with red heels peeking out from under the trousers.

“I don’t know if you actually read the invite, but it clearly said wear something green,” she says, tapping her heel against the marble flooring. She was aware she sounded extremely rude, but her patience was already running low from dealing with uptight and entitled old people throughout the night.

“My apologies. Green just isn’t my color,” the person practically purrs, turning around slowly. Margot’s angry words immediately die on her tongue. Of course it was none other than Alana _fucking_ Bloom.

 Margot can’t help but rake her eyes down Alana’s body, her red vest a striking contrast against her suit jacket and opting for a simple black mask. “In that case, I guess you can be my exception. Red is definitely your color.”

“I hope you don’t mind, Mason invited me yesterday at our session. You didn’t tell me it was a masquerade party,” Alana notes with a smile especially reserved for the other woman.

“I thought it would be more appropriate for Mason’s…current condition. His face isn’t very pleasant to look at for most people,” Margot explains, joining the other woman by the stairwell railing to look down at her guests.

“That’s sweet of you,” Alana says and looks like she wants to say more before Margot is pulled away for yet another photo opportunity, but Alana smiles sympathetically at her, knowing she will probably run into the other woman later that evening.

She only breaks her gaze with the other woman when she feels a little tap to her shoulder. “Good evening, Dr. Bloom,” a calm voice says to her left side, Alana picking up the familiar accent immediately.

“Hello Dr. Lecter. It’s been a while since we last saw each other, how’ve you been?” she asks, her jaw settling beneath her mask. She opts to call him by his professional name, they weren't nearly as close as they used to be. Besides, the last time the pair had spoken wasn’t very pleasant.

“Well. I have been doing very well. Are you still at the FBI?” he asks, his puffed thin lips quirking up in a smile. He had opted for no mask tonight.

“I am. How is your practice going?” she asks, tapping a nail on her cane handle before gripping it tightly. Her personal anxious quirk.

“It’s going well. Sadly, my patients aren’t. I’m sure you’re aware of Mason Verger’s incident, what a shame that was,” he says, pursing his lips a little in a frown. Alana narrows her eyes but nods anyway, looking away to search the throng of people.

A slow song had started and couples began to fill the dancefloor. She spots Margot dancing with a taller man with graying hair, twirling amongst other couples. With a smirk, she meets Lecter’s little brown eyes again. “Excuse me,” is all she says, turning on her heel to ascend down the stairs.

“It was nice running into you again, Alana,” the psychiatrist calls to her, Alana rolling her eyes. The two were hardly on nice terms with each other, after Hannibal decided to introduce Alana to bizarre topics and methods within his psychiatry training. She had broken their mentorship, relationship, whatever they had once his true colors had shown about a year ago.

Zip-zagging her body through swaying couples, she interjects Margot’s dancing partner immediately with a coy little smile and he turns away with a wrinkled scowl. The other woman accepts this interruption gratefully, resting one hand on Alana’s shoulder and clasping her other with Alana’s hand.

“Who was that anyway?” Alana asks, genuinely curious.

“That would be Mr. Warner, an investor to the company. I wasn’t sure who he was trying to set me up with, himself or his son,” she says, causing both women to laugh. Alana hums in agreement, tightening her hold on Margot’s waist slightly.

“You don’t strike me as a gold digger type anyway,” she teases, Margot rolling her eyes fondly.

“You don’t strike me as that either, which was kind of surprising when I saw you talking to Dr. Lecter who is at least ten years older than you. I didn’t know you two knew each other.” She notices Alana stiffens her hand within Margot’s clasp briefly before pursing her lips for her response.

“I don’t, not anymore at least. He used to be my…friend. I guess a mentor in a way, back in grad school. But we- I…I’m not involved with him anymore,” she explains hesitantly, stumbling around the right words. As ungraceful her response was, Margot is clearly pleased with it.

She presses herself a little closer to the other woman’s slightly shorter body, until a shoulder nearly slams into her back. “Excuse me, pardon me,” a rapid voice mutters, pushing his way through the crowd.

“Goddamn it, Chilton,” Margot mutters, flipping her hair off her left shoulder. Alana wraps a protective arm all the way around Margot’s waist, pulling her head closer.

“I didn’t know they knew each other,” she muses quietly into the nearby ear, Margot trying to ignore how her whole body swelled with heat when Alana’s breath puffed against her neck.

She casts that aside, craning her head to see what Alana is talking about. Frederick has pushed his way over to Dr. Lecter’s table, talking animatedly with gritted teeth and flushed faces.

“I wonder what the other side of Chilton’ face looks like when he’s really mad,” Alana muses aloud, mostly to herself but it makes Margot giggle.

“It’d probably look even weirder than Mason’s,” the younger woman says, prompting a loud laugh from Alana, which she tries to suppress with a hand. This moment is soon dissipated once Mason enters the room, which soon the whole ballroom is clapping and cheering his name, celebrating his recovery.

Alana sees her discomfort and annoyance with this and squeezes her hip gently. “Want to get out of here?” she asks, searching green eyes for her answer. Margot meets her eyes and smiles, reaching behind her to grab two flutes of champagne from a nearby server passing by.

“You read my mind,” Margot purrs, Alana grabbing her cane from her belt loop and keeping her other hand on the small of Margot’s back as she leads the way to the rooftop balcony.

The ladies were quiet on walk up to the roof, the only sound produced was from their heels echoing off the narrow hallway. Alana holds open the door, Margot leading the way out into the cool evening. Margot can’t help but notice her bat symbol wasn’t glowing in the sky tonight for a change, allowing a relieved sigh to escape as she passes Alana’s glass of champagne to her, leaning her weight against the roof’s balcony cement railing.

“It’s so nice out,” the older woman notes in-between sips of her beverage. Margot nods in agreement, desperate to get out of the comfortable small talk. She was dying to know if the other woman was serious about her offer from their last nightly encounter, about teaming up together, but she wasn’t sure how to broach the topic.

“Hey Alana?” she starts, tightening her dress shawl around her shoulders. Alana hums in acknowledgment, turning away from the city skyline to look at the other woman.

“Why are you and Dr. Lecter not together anymore?” she asks abruptly, wanting to smack herself once the words tumble so quickly out of her.

This causes Alana to smile a little, laughing softly at the ground as she fidgets with her mask, tossing it off completely. “How direct. But Hannibal and I had disagreements on the grounds of good and fair psychiatric practices if I must put an explanation on our…split,” she explains, searching the younger woman’s face for understanding.

“May I ask why you want to know about Dr. Lecter and I’s relationship?” she asks, eyes flickering between Margot’s eyes and her lips. Margot shrugs, her shawl slipping down her shoulders. She only brought it to hide her scars on her exposed back but regretted not bringing a jacket, the chilly wind was whipping all around the roof.

“Just curious, I guess. I’ve only heard of him because of Mason and you know how he is. You can imagine my surprise when I saw you two together,” she states, swirling her leftover champagne in the bottom of her glass.

Alana shifts slightly, her hips now facing Margot’s against the railing. “You don’t think maybe _I_ need a little psychiatric help?” she asks amusedly. Margot smiles as she tips back the rest of her drink, eyes locked with blue the whole time.

“I’m in no position to frown upon mental health, after living thirty years in the same house as Mason Verger maybe I should pay a visit to Dr. Lecter’s office,” she says with a laugh.

Alana offers a tight smile, setting down her glass on an outdoor side table. “Well if you are serious about it, I would suggest not going to him. I can put you in touch with better suited psychiatrists,” she offers.

 “I might take you up on that one day. You _really_ don’t like him, do you?” Margot flickers her eyes between Alana’s left and right.

Alana looks down at the ground, toying the bottom of her cane with the gravel. The other woman’s gaze was too much to handle sometimes, burning with emerald intensity. “I’ve seen his true colors and now I simply choose not to trust him is all. Psychiatrists must build trust with their patients and I wouldn’t want to see your trust placed in him,” Alana states, looking up from the ground now.

“Not to worry. That list is already very small,” Margot sighs into an answer, looking away and down at the busy city street.

Alana turns to look into the building’s large skyline windows, looking inside at the guests. Chilton has moved away from Lecter’s table and is now talking excitedly with Mason, hands clapping each other on back’s like men often do. “I don’t blame you, your inner circle is full of…colorful characters and not in a good way,” she replies, smiling sympathetically.

Margot nods in agreement, turning over to rest her back against the railing now to look into the windows for herself. Her brother has taken his mask off, but that doesn’t seem to discourage Mr. Chilton from their conversation. Perhaps they bonded over their hideous facial features.

“Are you calling yourself a colorful character, Dr. Bloom?” she asks in a teasing tone, meeting Alana’s eyes with a smirk.

Alana’s eyes widen slightly and she shifts her cane a little, Margot had clearly flustered her. “I didn’t know I was worthy to be in your inner circle of famous socialites and fancy business people,” she explains, returning the smirk.

“My world is far from all….this,” she says, gesturing an arm to the window where her guests are enjoying themselves by getting drunk on expensive liquor in equally expensive outfits.

“How far? Is it?” Alana asks, gently prompting as she shifts a little closer to the other woman. Margot purses her lips, quirking in a little incredulous smile. If Alana was looking for an entrance into that topic, her other life, she supposed now would be a better time than any other.

“How different is it? Well Dr. Bloom, it’s like day and night,” she answers breathily, coming a little closer. Alana’s eyes flutter from green eyes to plush lips, she’s so close Margot can feel her puffs of hot air on her lips, still wet from the champagne.

“Day and night, huh?” she echoes, propping her cane up on the cement roof wall to rest both hands on the upper bar railing on the sides of Margot’s waist.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, with you being a newbie to this and all,” Margot says, growing tired of Alana’s redundant teasing. If she wasn’t going to state the giant elephant ( _bat?_ ) in the room, then she was.

“Then I guess I’m just going to have to build a reputation around here,” she states before shifting her head closer to Margot’s, much closer to where she was needed, pausing to gently remove Margot’s masquerade mask.

Margot hesitates, moving her head a little once she remembered the windows. Alana senses this and brings a hand to cradle her jaw, her thumb rubbing soothingly against the skin there. “It’s okay, they can’t see us,” she assures softly, tucking a lock of brunette hair behind her bejeweled ear.

“How do you know that?” the younger woman asks, searching Alana’s blue eyes.

“The night protects us just as much as we protect it,” Alana states before pressing her lips against Margot’s. As their lips touch, ever so gently and softly in all the right places, Margot found herself believing the other guardian of the night.


	5. a walk about the gardens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batwoman and Nightwing team up for an attack at the Baltimore Botanic Gardens.

Batwoman had grown accustomed to the soft pitter patter against her car roof, the rain falling slightly heavily from the night sky. This car, nearly indestructible and crafted from layers of steel (painted black, of course) and bulletproof glass, could handle more than a little rain.

Her crime tracker on the grid panel built into the car’s center console hadn’t beeped at her for the past thirty minutes, so maybe Baltimore had settled down for the evening. Batwoman doubted this moment of clarity would last no more than another half hour, but she was a little upset she hadn’t run into Nightwing at all within the night. Her daytime encounters with the other woman were starting to grow a little more frequent these past few weeks, she found herself giddy every time Alana stopped by the Verger Tower to take her out for coffee or lunch.

Although these dates were more than welcomed and spending time with Alana was always so lovely, Margot was yearning for the privacy the night allowed to break down her plan with the older woman about taking down Scarecrow. Especially with Chilton coming to the Verger manor everyday to discuss with Mason, she knew they weren’t alone on the demise of Scarecrow.

She should’ve seen this coming: two egotistical and entitled men coming together with their bountiful resources and outrageous ideas, they probably thought they were the saviors of the city. “You ought to hear some of the garbage the FBI is feeding me, Dr. Bloom came around here the other day to question me. She was really into the straw material the docs found under my fingernails that night, or maybe that was just her excuse for touching me. She probably wants to get ahead with her gig at the FBI,” Mason murmured excitedly over a tumbler of whiskey in one of the many sitting rooms with Frederick.

“Wouldn’t be the first time she uses her body to get ahead,” Chilton said with a snicker, Mason laughing manically before coughing hysterically on his own saliva. Margot had to physically bite her tongue so she wouldn’t go off on the two men when she overheard their outrageous conversation, it would do more harm than good.

Batwoman grips the steering wheel harder as she processes the old conversation, turning to park her car into a dark alleyway. She had forgotten her grapple gun in the cave, so she stomps her way up a random brick building’s fire escape, opting for a change of scenery from her usual watch post at the top of the massive Verger Tower.

“Damn, who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?” a familiar voice asks, Batwoman whipping her body around to see Nightwing sitting on the edge of the building, her legs swinging back and forth over the edge in the drizzling rain.

Batwoman grins and nearly skips over to the other woman, the woman she had been wanting to see all day. “No one, really. But figuratively speaking, it would be none other than Mason Verger and Frederick Chilton,” she answers, stepping over the edge of the building, opting to stand instead of taking a seat, her cape blowing in the evening air.

Nightwing rolls her eyes as she taps her heel against the building rhythmically. “Of course. Here, come here. Rant to me all you want,” she offers as she pats the space next to her, smiling up at the other woman.

The caped crusader takes up her offer and eases herself down on the buildings edge. She feels Nightwing shift her arm behind her back, resting her hand on the other side of her waist. Batwoman places her own gloved hand beside Nightwing’s hand, her pinky outstretched to touch the other woman’s. “I almost didn’t expect to see you tonight, this isn’t your usual spot.”

“I kind of…forgot my grapple gun. The Verger Tower is way too tall for me to climb and security would have a field day with the sight of me cutting through the cubicles,” Batwoman explains sheepishly, Nightwing laughing softly.

“And Freddie Lounds. She could be lurking in the shadows right now, papping pictures of us,” the older woman proposes, faking a grimace to make the other woman laugh.

“Is she the real villain we should look out for now? The annoyingly ambitious journalist?” Batwoman asks, shifting her head a little closer to Nightwing’s shoulder.

Nightwing hums in acknowledgement, tapping her pinky against the other one on top of hers. “Maybe. Is this your way of telling me you’re taking up my offer?” she asks after a few beats of comfortable silence, the only sound coming from the noisy city below.

“I would like to, if you’re still willing,” Batwoman says softly, her eyes meeting Nightwing’s eye mask. She desperately wanted to take the shield off to meet the blue eyes underneath. “I am definitely still willing. So, we have a deal?” she asks cheekily, smiling so big her gleaming teeth appear under vibrant crimson lips.

Batwoman couldn’t stop staring at them, so she proposed an idea. “Let’s seal it,” she murmurs softly, reaching both gloved hands to cradle Nightwing’s jaw before it goes slack with surprise. “Maybe not here,” Batwoman says, sensing her hesitancy.

Nightwing wraps an arm around the other woman’s waist, gently twisting their bodies to rest on the gravel-covered rooftop. They sit up slightly, both of their backs resting against the roof wall, allowing full privacy. Nightwing starts to enthusiastically shift her head close to meet the other woman’s lips before Batwoman gently presses a hand to a slightly damp black and red shoulder. “May I?” she asks softly, bringing a finger to the edge of Nightwing’s eye mask.

Red lips part in contemplation, considering the question. “Only if you take off yours too,” she breathes back, her chest heaving slightly with excited and anxious nerves.

“You can still see me though,” Batwoman interjects with an amused smile.

“I know, but I want to feel you,” Nightwing says, tugging playfully on the ends of Batwoman’s brown waves.

She huffs an agreement, shifting her hands to the back of her mask to remove it as the other woman flicks off her eye mask with a single finger. Setting both their masks down on the ground, Margot shakes her hair out around her shoulders but Alana’s loud laugh causes her to look up. “Not the reaction I was expecting,” she says with narrowed eyes as Alana clutches her sides, aching from laughter.

“You…look like…a raccoon,” she says in-between dying giggles, Margot groaning in response. “This is why I should have kept my mask on,” she grumbles, rubbing away at her black eye makeup.

“You still look very cute,” Alana assures, tangling her red and black fingers into soft brown hair before kissing Margot.

“I’m going to start withholding kisses if you keep being mean,” Margot warns as she pulls away for much needed air, squeezing Alana’s clothed shoulder, the sleek woven material feeling like slick gloss under her fingers.

“I’m sorry for laughing at you,” the older woman murmurs, pressing little soft kisses to Margot’s exposed jaw.

“Show me how sorry you are,” she commands breathlessly and Alana obeys, keeping one arm wrapped around her waist underneath Margot’s cape and one hand tangled in her hair. Margot was loving the gentle and comforting embrace the other woman had her in, until an annoying beep came from Alana’s mask. With a groan, she breaks apart and reaches behind the younger woman to grab her mask.

“What is it?” Margot asks, toying with the ends of Alana’s dark hair, tousled and a little wet from the wind and rain.

“I got a notification from the Baltimore Botanic Gardens. Care to take a stroll around the greenery with me, Madame?” Alana asks with a posh accent, extending her hand for Margot to take. She laughs as she slips on her mask once again, Alana slipping on her own before they descend down the fire escape, Alana choosing to use her escrima sticks to slide all the way down.

Margot can’t help but laugh at the excited puppy eyes her car receives from Alana, Margot holding open the door for her. “Shouldn’t I drive the car? I was the one who asked you out on this date,” she interjects once both women are settled inside, playing with Margot’s freehand over the center console.

“I might let you later, if you’re good.”

Alana promises her good behavior with a grin and quick kiss to the other woman’s gloved hand as they drive off to the Botanic Gardens.

 

* * *

 

 

The pair walk into the large city greenhouse together, although not hand in hand. Alana had tried this a couple times already but Margot insisted now was not the appropriate time, especially due to the fact the duo wasn’t even sure what or who they were looking for, uneasy about who could be lurking within the shadows of the city gardens. “My notification just said a suspicious character was here,” Nightwing muses, looking up at the large sphere shaped ceiling, entirely made of green stained glass.

“And Baltimore is full of those. So this could very well be a robbery escape from the gift shop or Scarecrow,” Batwoman muses, noticing the snap of Nightwing’s head in attention for the last name she had mentioned. She presses a hidden button on her eye mask, Batwoman doing the same on her own mask to use her radar detector on any movement in the area.

Suddenly, a crash of glass alerts both women to their far left, into the garden’s storage lab. Batwoman regretted not bringing her grapple gun, she could’ve easily used it to sneakily come into the room through an air duct but she opts for her feet, the pair storming into the room. Freddie Lounds appears, her vibrant red curls soaked with numerous liquids of plants and shattered glass covering her body as a shadow of a larger body runs out of the other door. Her body was convulsing with terrors, her eyes wide and her fingers clawing desperately at her skin as her screams echo throughout the room. Batwoman hurries over to her, draping her cape across her body to comfort her.

As she softly coos comfortingly to the other woman, Nightwing passes a vial of serum in a syringe to her gloved hand. “This will take care of the gas, it works. I’ve used it on myself,” she assures quickly before dashing out of the room to follow the escaping pounding footsteps outside. Batwoman can’t even think to worry about the other guardian of the night as she searches for an exposed vein for her to enter the serum in. She finds one eventually and with slightly nervous hands she pushes the medication into Freddie’s bloodstream, her screams and frantic eyes coming to a close in a matter of seconds.

Hoisting the unconscious body up in her arms and scooping up the journalist’s crushed camera into her utility pouch for evidence, she walks quickly out of the room to try to find where Nightwing went.

She finds her quickly, her body falling from the third floor of the observatory deck as Batwoman watches in helpless horror, Nightwing’s escrima stick gripped in her own hand. At the last moment, she cracks open the wire and loops around the stairwell’s railing, crashing into the metal with a grunt.

She lowers herself down, face battered and bruised. “Bastard,” she wheezes once her feet hit the ground, grunting from the impact of her knees. “That’s going to hurt like a bitch tomorrow,” she notes, pulling together the wire of her weapon to make it one piece again. “Is she alright?” she asks once she comes closer to Batwoman, gesturing to Freddie’s sleeping form in Batwoman’s arms.

“Are _you_ alright? What happened?” Batwoman asks incredulously, eyebrows raised in worry beneath her mask.

“Nothing, he got away before I could do anything fun. I borrowed one of your batarang things, I hope that was okay. But I have a tracker in him now,” she explains with a smile, Batwoman’s eyebrows still raised in question.

Nightwing sighs with a little wave of her hand, checking Freddie’s pulse of her neck. “We should drop her off by the hospital. Who knows what plant toxins got inside her cuts. But I put a tiny tracker on the edge of your weapon, it should enter his bloodstream once he rips the weapon out of his skin. I have excellent aim,” she replies with a wicked grin, draping an arm around Batwoman’s shoulders as they exit the Botanic Gardens. Batwoman allows this contact and tightens her grip on Freddie once they reach her Batmobile.

They ease the sleeping woman into the backseat, Nightwing buckling her in as Batwoman surveys her surroundings. “I wonder why she was here, what she was drawn to come here,” she muses, looking back at the building before turning to get inside the driver’s side.

Nightwing coughs behind her, Batwoman turning around startlingly. “I was good tonight. Can I drive now?” she asks pleadingly, her red and black hands clasped together for effect.

“You nearly plunged three stories to the ground!” she insists, eyes raised in alarm. Nightwing merely brushes this off with a wave of her hand, taking the keys from Batwoman’s gloved fingers. “It was no biggie. I landed on my feet just fine. You should take up gymnastics, it’s an excellent form of physical therapy,” she tosses over her shoulder once she takes the driver’s seat.

Batwoman huffs all the way over to the passenger seat, slamming her door a little dramatically. “I knew that cane was fake.”

“Hey, it is not entirely fake. I need an identity too. Some days, like tomorrow will be for instance, my nightly injuries take a toll on my body,” she says, revving the engine loudly with excited eyes.

“Easy. Don’t wake the annoyingly ambitious journalist,” she warns, gesturing to the back seat with the nod of her head.

“Do you think she’ll be okay? Once she wakes up?” the older woman asks, gripping the steering wheel with concern as they head to the hospital.

“I hope so. You know how revenge can be served up in this town,” Batwoman states, glancing at Nightwing with knowing eyes. They were the vengeful guardians of this town, Mason and Frederick be damned.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it wrong of me that more than anything I'm bummed that Alana and Margot couldn't enjoy a nice little date around the city gardens? These ladies can't catch a break!


	6. an alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margot gets some self-assurance and clarification from Alana after dealing with Mason.

Over the next few weeks, Margot had grown accustomed to opening the grand oak door of the Verger manor for Frederick Chilton, his visits were becoming more and more frequent. She had wanted to bring Alana by the house, to discuss their plans for Scarecrow and to just show her around her favorite parts of the house like her stables and bat cave, but knew their interactions wouldn’t be successful with both men in the house. She never felt comfortable in this house with Mason and didn’t want Alana in that environment. Alana accepted this and understood how secretive their other identity and their plans had to be, for the time being. Her lover was open about taking down not only Scarecrow but also Mason, and enjoyed talking about when the right opening for his demise would appear.

The pair were currently lounging lazily on Alana’s living room couch back at her apartment after both women had gotten off their work shifts, lipstick smeared on bruised lips and hair tousled, as they held onto each other. “Mason has what he wants with Chilton. They’ll find out soon enough that there are other people who want to see the end of Scarecrow. I’m sure he has read about us indirectly in Tattle Crime,” she muses, playing with the bottom of Margot’s now rumpled blouse.

Margot raises her head a little, Alana’s hair tickling her cheek. “Chilton needs to go too. He’s been taking money away from his institution for way too long, you should get the FBI onto that,” she proposes, toying with one of Alana’s buttons on her vest, half unbuttoned and a lacy black bra partially exposed.

“We’re a little tied up with Ms. Lounds and her case, but we should do that as well. That asylum is in shambles and not even close to prepared to take in all these men,” the older woman states, fingers now moved on from playing with Margot’s hair to dip under her blouse’s collar to feel the outline of her scars on her back, wordlessly understanding what caused them.

“You want to throw them into the institution?” Margot asks incredulously after a few beats of silence.

“What did you think I wanted to do with them?” Alana asks, a little amused smile on her lips. Her eyes widen a little when she catches onto Margot’s drift, her smile dropping. “Kill them? That’s a bit excessive,” she notes uncomfortably, shifting her body a little underneath the one on top of hers.

The younger woman takes the hint and raises her body, grabbing her jacket from the floor. Alana sighs heavily behind her, smoothing a hand down Margot’s back. “Don’t go. I just think we had a misunderstanding on what we wanted,” she says softly, Margot now standing up and flipping her hair out from under her wrinkled collar of her blouse.

“I thought we wanted the same outcome on the men that have hurt us,” she says dejectedly, walking over to Alana’s fireplace to rest her hands on the ledge there, flicking dust off the few picture frames Alana has. She notices a picture of a slightly younger Alana, college perhaps, of a party gathering. She has messily cut the edge of the photo, but a patterned brown suit and the edge of a tan face still shows. Margot wordlessly accepts that the removed person is probably Dr. Lecter.

“We do, I do want that for you! Do you know how much it kills me knowing that you’re in the same house with Mason? And now Chilton? It makes me fucking sick to my stomach, Margot!” Alana huffs, standing up from the couch a little too quickly, her aching knees disagreeing with her. The younger woman can hear Alana’s soft grunt of pain and turns around from the fireplace with a frustrated sigh, walking back to the couch to help Alana sit back down.

Alana tries to protest but Margot shushes her, easing her down by her shoulders. “You need to rest. We can talk about this later, I need to get back to the house anyway,” she says, rubbing her girlfriend’s tense shoulders as Alana smooths a hand up and down her back.

“Please don’t go back to the house with him there. Stay the night here, you know you’re more than welcome to,” Alana insists, blue eyes searching green.

Margot tries to hide her blush at her lover’s suggestion of a sleepover. The women hadn’t reached _that_ part of their relationship, contrary to the Tattle Crime’s rumor of Margot Verger being Baltimore’s most eligible playgirl and bachelorette, she still hadn’t actually had a successful sexual encounter. She couldn’t even if she wanted to, Mason had her under his watchful thumb and had forcefully given her a hysterectomy a few years prior. Even if she wanted to produce an heir for the Verger dynasty with Alana, _someday_ , she would never be able to. Margot was still distraught about the whole ordeal, the mere sight of her scar on her lower stomach partially being the reason behind her fear of intimacy.

Alana senses the discomfort at the mention of their sleepover and cradles Margot’s cheeks with her hands. “Not like that! All we can do is sleep and that’s totally okay. It’d be a very friendly adult sleepover,” she assures with a goofy grin, just wanting to make her girlfriend smile and feel comfortable.

It proves to work because she is rewarded with a quick peck to her lips but Margot still gets up from the couch anyway, slipping on her fur coat. “I might stay the night at the penthouse suite in the Verger Tower but I really need to head back to the house, I have some Batwoman matters to attend to,” she explains, brushing out her tangled hair in the hallway mirror.

Alana huffs in disappointment and crosses her arms stubbornly, Applesauce coming out of the kitchen to jump on the couch to sit next to her owner. With a quick kiss to the top of Alana’s head and a scratch behind Applesauce’s ears, Margot left Alana’s brownstone for her town car waiting outside.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot was so caught up with sharpening her batarangs, the sparks and loud noise produced echoing off the large cave walls, she didn’t even hear the loud beep from her computer monitor. Cordell’s face appears on one of the large computer monitors, eyes widened in fear. “Ms. Verger, your brother is on his way right now to the library. I’d suggest hurrying over to meet him there now if I were you,” he states in a hushed flurry of words, his face disappearing from the screen just as quickly as it had appeared.

Cordell, the butler of the house, was the only person in the house who was aware of Margot’s secret cave and other identity. She was at first wary of his presence and quiet personality, but he had proven to never betray her trust.

With a snap, she flips off her blacksmith’s helmet and flings off her gloves as she rushes over to the elevator. The ancient thing was way too slow and had been acting up all week so she grabbed her grapple gun on the way over, shooting herself up to the house level with her tool.

She’s pulling herself up from the elevator shaft just as her brother turns the doorknob, quickly hoisting her body up, shutting the elevator gate, pressing a discrete button to shift a hidden bookshelf in front of the elevator, shoving her grapple gun behind a row of books, and plopping her body down in a nearby leather chair by the fireplace. She quickly grabs the closest book near her to act as if she was preoccupied with reading.

“There’s my baby sister,” Mason says to her, closing the door with a little too much force. He hobbles over to her, his steps wobbling and uneasy and Margot wonders momentarily if he is drunk or if he has electrocuted himself once again. She shudders as he presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek but she smells no alcohol on his breath, watching him intently as he saunters over to the fireplace.

He merely studies the dancing flames for a moment, his scarred face scrunched up in contemplation before shoving his foot onto a crackling log. Margot rolls her eyes, she was used to her brother’s random acts of masochism by now. “Trying to become more like your friend Mr. Chilton?” she asks drolly, her brother replying with a manic little chuckle.

He taps his foot out on the carpet, ruining a patch of the plush carpet with ash. “Just wanted to see what it’d feel like. You should be more like that, Margot. Acting without a great deal of thought,” he insists, plopping down on the ottoman seat closest to her right side, reaching over to give her knee a little pat.

“Someone has to use a little logic around here,” she mutters under her breath, tossing the book off to the side table.

“Want to know my most recent idea that didn’t require a great deal of thought?” he asks, gripping her knee a little more forcefully and probably causing more bruises underneath her slacks.

“Not particularly,” she sighs, bored at first but then sighing gratefully once Mason lessens his grip. She suppresses a cry when he decides to use her knee as leverage to hoist himself up from the ottoman, her leg muscles was still screaming in pain from her previous activities at Batwoman.

“I would like to get a pet eel. Not any ordinary eel, I want the big one from the city aquarium. Chilton offered to help me with the task,” he muses aloud, tapping his wrinkly chin in mock contemplation.

“And what is so special about the one at the aquarium?” she asks in a frustrated sigh, drumming her fingers against the cool leather of her chair.

Mason turns to her and offers wicked grin. “It has the highest voltage of electricity like no other. The aquarium’s committee won’t give it to me, greedy bastards, even after all I went through…what he did to me…,” Mason mumbles and grumbles, muttering obscenities under his breath.

Margot wanted to gag at her brother’s entitled behavior, it was just ridiculous. “No one owes you anything, Mason. Please understand that,” Margot says to her brother’s back, refusing to bite her tongue any longer. She subtly shifts her hand to her lower back, acting as if she was merely scratching an itch there but was actually feeling for the cool metal of her recently sharpened batarang in her back pocket. _Just in case._

Mason turns to face her again, his shriveled lips quirked up in a smirk. “No, sis, you have it all wrong! I deserve this. After all I went through, what we went through, don’t we deserve a new family pet?” he asks, his clenched fists meeting together so he can wring them together. He still hasn’t changed out of his luxury work suit, a purple and green suit combo, and his purple gloves squeak with the rough contact.

“What _we_ went through?” she echoes, confused as to what he meant.

“I am sure that my accident and recovery hasn’t been easy for you,” he replies with a disturbing smile as he tilts his head, his green hair flopping over his face.

“I just want you taken care of,” she mutters into a lie, shifting her attention to clawing a little into the leather armrest, giving her anxious fingers something to do.

“Just as I want to take care of you, baby sister. You know what? You outta come to Chilton and I’s next meeting. You could serve a great purpose to us,” he says, smacking the back of her hand with an assuring pat and grasping it tightly.

“You want _me_ to take down the Scarecrow with you?” she asks, looking up at him with expectant eyes.

He tosses his head back and laughs so hysterically he has tears running down his face in seconds. “No silly goose! I want you to get me and my pal our whiskey!”

Margot sighs heavily and rolls her eyes. “That’s what Cordell is for,” she mutters as he tosses a goodnight over his shoulder on the way out.

She was so sick of constantly being seen as a devalued human being in her brother’s eyes that all she wanted to do was curl up and cry. Her cell phone vibrates in her pocket, interrupting her little pity party. It was a link to a Tattle Crime article from Alana, raving about her recent charity gala she threw. She clutches the phone to her chest and grins with pride, loving that at least one person saw her worth.

 

* * *

 

 

Alana greets her the next day in the Verger Tower’s lobby with a bouquet of lilacs in one hand and a travel drink carrier in the other, two steaming to-go cups of coffee waiting. “What are these for?” Margot asks, gesturing to the flowers after greeting her girlfriend with a kiss.

“For our ill-fated date to the Botanic Gardens. A peace offering,” she says with a smiling, using her free hand to hold onto Margot’s.

“You should come by the property sometime, our gardens flourish this time of year,” she proposes, squeezing Alana’s hand a little.

The older woman meets her green eyes with her eyebrows raised questioningly. “I get to come by your house?” she asks, pulling out an outdoor café chair for her, Margot nodding as she takes her seat. She passes Alana’s coffee cup to her across the table once she is seated on the other side, smiling a little.

“What changed your mind?” Alana asks, taking a sip of her own coffee.

Margot breaks away her lips from the cup lid with a little pop, basking in the rich flavor. It made her heart flutter that her girlfriend remembered her favorite coffee order. “Mason Verger will be going away very soon,” she announces after scanning the area for any listeners. It was barren, the café’s customers opting for eating inside as the weather outside was gloomy with the promise of rain. The women didn’t mind, they were used to a little rain.

The other woman purses her lips, opening and then closing it to carefully consider her words. “Margot, I didn’t get any sleep last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said you wanted last night. I just want to say that I want whatever you want, if this is what you need then I want to help you. I just want you to be safe and happy and if this allows that for you-“ she rambles, completely throwing the thought of an organized response out the window but Margot silences this with a touch of her hand across the table.

“It’s okay. Mason’s path is bound to cross with ours anyway, he is definitely on board with getting rid of Scarecrow. Good thing we’re ahead of the game,” she says, lips quirking in a cocky smirk. Alana meets this before breaking their glance to dig around her purse. Margot etches her face in confusion before Alana pushes the most recent issue of Tattle Crime across the table and into the other woman’s waiting hands.

“Damn, Freddie is already back to work?” she mutters, eyes scanning the article on her attack at the city gardens from last week.

Alana hums in agreement, tipping the rest of her coffee back before popping a peppermint into her mouth. “She’s ambitious, that one,” she mumbles over the mint before crunching.

“And definitely vengeful,” Margot says with widened eyes, scanning Freddie’s furious but eloquent words on her ordeal of that fateful night.

“Should we worry about her?” Margot asks after a few moments, passing the paper back to the other woman.

Alana shrugs, grabbing their empty cups and tossing them into a trashcan a few feet away, the paper cups landing square into the hole. She had excellent aim. “Probably not. She could be an ally,” she proposes with a grin, hands intertwining once Margot has gathered her flowers and purse.

“You’re the only ally I need,” the younger woman assures with a kiss just as rain startled to drizzle onto their pressed faces in the middle of the city sidewalk. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish we saw on the show how Alana’s mindset changed from “Mason is going to prison” to “Mason is going to die”. My personal headcanon is that Alana fucking Bloom is fucking whipped for her woman, I hope I make that clearly evident in my work.


	7. an unexpected reward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batwoman and Nightwing attempt an attack on Scarecrow.

Batwoman was currently in East Baltimore, back pressed against Nightwing’s as she surveyed their surroundings. Nightwing’s tracker, recently implanted into Scarecrow thanks to Nightwing’s excellent aim, had taken them here, a row of abandoned houses and shut-ins in the sketchiest part of town.

“I feel like sitting ducks, seriously where is he?” she mutters, using her radar detector built into her mask to find movement.

“He’s got to be here, the tracker wouldn’t lie,” Nightwing mutters back, her patience running low as well.

Batwoman sighs heavily, flipping her radar off and sauntering over to the edge of the barren room inside a random abandoned house the pair were currently stationed in. She spots a destitute mother and son outside, on the outskirts of the abandoned subdivision, plastic bags stuffed with clothes and belongings as they hurry up the steps to a shack in shambles. The boy is in tattered little rags for clothes, probably only five years old. Batwoman’s maternal instincts flutter inside her ribcage but she shakes the thought away. No use in wishing for a legacy when she would never be able to have one.

An eerily long and drawn out creak interrupts the silence of the house, both women turning to what caused the sound. Nightwing’s eye mask glows in the dark, radar intact and her escrima stick glowing red in her tight grasp. Batwoman positions herself for attack, clutching a batarang in one hand, sharpened and ready for a target. All that can be seen inside the barren room is the red glow of Nightwing’s suit and the little light from the dull lamppost outside the windowless house.

Suddenly, a misty fog slithers up from under a door to Nightwing’s left, paint completely chipping off the old wood. “Cover up!” Nightwing yells, Batwoman claps a hand to her mouth and nose, taking one last gulp of air before Scarecrow’s concoction has the chance to inebriate her brain. Nightwing avoids this task, having already the immunity of the gas in her body from her serum.

“Come on out, you coward! I thought we were the ones who were supposed to be scared of you!” Nightwing calls out menacingly teasing into the night, tightening her grip on her weapon.

“You are,” a cool voice, robotic in tone, murmurs from behind. Batwoman sends her batarang flying, hearing the squish of the sharp metal meeting flesh.

She watches as Nightwing surges her body forward to connect her knee with Scarecrow’s face, Batwoman meeting her halfway. She passes her escrima stick under Scarecrow’s spread legs, the tool now split in two with wire, to Batwoman in order to tie his hands behind his back as she uses the other stick to press against his throat.

Scarecrow acts quicker, hitting his head against Nightwing’s, causing her glowing eye mask to shatter to pieces and her nose to gush with blood. Nightwing grunts in pain but continues to push her full weight against the villain, Batwoman struggling in a haze to tie his hands. She had to use both hands to complete the task, moving slowly due to her vison being fogged with hazy visions of a figure slowly approaching her.

“Hey, honey? A little help up here!” Nightwing yells to Batwoman, grunting as she and Scarecrow tumble against the wall. He kicks his free leg up and knees her in the groin, causing her to moan in discomfort, crumbling her body up and using a hand to cradle her middle. He takes advantage of this and tries to free himself from her grasp, but she uses her other hand from the back of his neck to rip off his mask, taking some hair along with it.

Using her free eye, the one not covered in blood from her now shattered eye mask, Alana’s eyes widen in horror as her former friend, mentor, and lover flees away from her grasp. “If you recall, I taught you to be blind and not brave. Perhaps with a little glass in your eye, you can go back to being blind,” Hannibal tosses over his shoulder, snatching the straw mask from the floor before dashing away.

Batwoman can’t even hear any of this conversation take place, shifting a hand to protect her face as a familiar figure stomps closer to her, fist positioned to connect with her face. She shrieks and screams, begging the figure to stop. The shadowy vision of the mysterious figure comes fully close to her now, revealing Mason’s hideously scarred face in a wicked grin, his teeth gooey with black ooze. “You shouldn’t have run away, sis!” he hisses with a disgustingly grim grin, before her body is carefully hoisted up.

Batwoman tries kicking and pushing the body away, familiar hands tightening under her cape. “Shh. You’re okay,” a soothing voice calls to her, sounding miles away as a sharp pinching pain enters her neck. The last thing Batwoman sees is her favorite pair of blue eyes, blood dripping into them, bore into hers as her own eyes flutter shut into consciousness.

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes up to a slobbery warm tongue on the bottom of her bare foot, hot breath puffing on the wet skin. She shifts her foot back under the covers, grumbling in disgust. “Stop it Applesauce, let her sleep,” a familiarly soft voice scolds to her right, fingers brushing her hair for a moment before pulling away.

Margot tightens her grip on the warm covers with a whimper, missing the comforting human contact. “Nice going, you woke up your other mother,” she scolds to the dog once again before shutting her bedroom door, keeping her canine companion out.

“I’m her other mother?” Margot mumbles as she smiles into the edge of the pillow, still smelling like Alana.

“Oh. You heard that,” Alana says, smiling sheepishly as she nervously clutches the bottom of her long pajama shirt.

“Come here,” the younger woman commands, patting the mattress. Alana obeys and cuddles carefully next to her girlfriend’s bruised body once she has settled on the bed.

Margot rolls over to face the other body and gently traces a hand up under the other woman’s long t-shirt, feeling the muscles contract and the purple bruises loom into yellow. She pulls her hand out and then brushes away dark tresses of hair, feeling the starch bandage material over Alana’s left eyebrow. “Did glass really get into your eye?” she asks, cradling her hand under her girlfriend’s jaw now, green eyes searching blue.

Alana shakes her head, securing a protective arm around Margot’s waist. “He had horrible aim. He just messed up my nose pretty bad and kicked my lady parts really hard, but I’m fine. Are you okay?” she asks, rubbing a soothing hand up and down the other woman’s pajama clad back.

Margot smiles into the other woman’s clothed shoulder, loving that even though Alana’s body definitely took a bigger toll last night, she still only focused on her concerns. “I’m sorry for your lady parts. I only remember seeing bits and pieces, that gas really is powerful. More than anything though, I can’t get that… image out of my head,” she says, fingers clutching Alana’s shirt sleeve as she racks her brain for the horror of the previous night.

The older woman nods in understanding, securing her hold around Margot’s middle. “The gas is created to dig out a person’s worst fear and replay it over and over. At least now that you have the serum in your bloodstream, that won’t have to happen ever again. You have immunity from it now,” she explains, fingers dipping under Margot’s pajama shirt (technically, hers) and soothingly rubs the skin there.

“Was that one of the unjust psychiatry practices Hannibal taught you?” she asks, remembering the look of horror when Alana ripped his straw mask off last night.

“The study of human’s fear, yes. The gas, no. At least not yet back when I was his student but it really doesn’t surprise me, he was obsessed with learning the nuts and bolts of his patient’s fears. It fascinated him to no end,” she says, looking up at the ceiling, reminiscent about her college days.

“I wonder if he did that with Mason in his sessions,” Margot muses, hitching her leg over Alana’s to press the warm skin together.

“And what is Mason Verger’s biggest fear?” She turns her head to meet the other woman’s green eyes, crinkling slightly with warm amusement.

Margot raises her head up a little, lips positioned millimeters over her girlfriend’s, bare of her usual red lipstick. “Bats,” she answers easily before their lips meet in a proper good morning kiss.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot returns to work that same day, her mind still a bit groggy from the side effects of Alana’s serum for Scarecrow’s gas. That was one perk of having friends in the right places, her super smart girlfriend told her all about her friends at the FBI, Price and Zeller, who had helped her create the concoction on their shared walk of commute to work. With a quick peck on the lips as a goodbye, Alana parts her ways with Margot once they reach Verger Tower in the city’s downtown district. Margot didn’t have a lot planned at work today, only a couple shareholders meetings. She hoped this would change soon once Mason gets taken care of, she loved telling Alana what she would plan to do with the family enterprise once she became CEO. _One day._

Her thoughts are interrupted once she nears her office, a pathetic excuse for one put it was the only room her brother would allow her to have in the Verger Tower. It wasn’t too terrible, just a small room about the size of a modest bedroom with a desk, computer, a couch, and a mini bar well stocked with whiskey.

She had recently decorated her desk with a few pictures of her girlfriend, she loved spending a few moments of her day just admiring her pictures. Her personal favorite one being the one with all three of them: Alana curled up in her lap as Applesauce is in mid-lick on her own cheek, Margot’s face wrinkled in discomfort and Alana’s face etched with a huge grin with her arm outstretched to take the photo. The pictures allowed for a mini distraction of dealing with her brother being in the same work environment, she could just look at one photograph and feel the other woman’s presence. She could only hope they would produce even more silly photos, the two women had been dating for nearly six months now.

Her heart drops as she fully enters her office, the sight of Mason lounging lazily in her office chair, his feet propped up on the desk. She grits her teeth but walks in with a flip of her hair, shutting the door behind her.

“New clothes?” he asks in greeting, nodding his head to her outfit. She had to borrow Alana’s clothes due to spending the night at her apartment the previous night, gray slacks with a forest green sheer blouse.

“I went shopping last night with a friend,” she lies easily, setting down her bag on the side table by the couch, pulling out her files for her meetings she had later that day.

“A friend,” he echoes, snatching a small picture frame from her desk, studying it for a few moments. She made a mental note to furiously clean and polish the picture frame once her brother leaves the room.

“And Alana Bloom is a…friend of yours?” he asks, flipping the picture over to face Margot. It was yet another personal favorite of hers, the two had visited a photo booth when Alana took her out to the local boardwalk outside town a few months ago. She had a very personal photo from that same photo booth strip, of the two of them kissing. Always paranoid about her brother finding out about them somehow, she had cut it and placed it inside her desk drawer, locked away from his grip and watchful eyes.

She should’ve known he would come into her office unannounced one of these days, Mason always seemed to have the keys to everything good in her life. Always ready to snatch them from her hands. “We’ve become close, yes. And her name is Dr. Alana Bloom,” she corrects, flipping through papers in a random manila file to act as if she was busy.

He scoffs at this, tossing the frame back onto the desk. “I highly doubt that woman is as educated as she presents herself, Margot. You know how things work nowadays, it’s so easy to fake your way around just to get what you want,” he mutters, hoisting himself up from her desk seat.

“She is as educated as she seems. I’ve seen her degrees, as if her intelligence needs any physical clarification,” she retorts back. She wasn’t going to let her girlfriend be berated by her idiotic brother.

“Why so defensive, baby sister?” he asks, crossing his arms as his green eyebrows quirk up, a wry smile in place.

She ignores this observation, striding over to her desk and taking a seat, organizing her files and papers on her desk. She adjusts her picture frame that Mason fondled, subtly polishing away at her brother’s smudgy fingerprints with the sleeve of her blouse as her brother prepares himself a tumbler of whiskey at her mini bar. “So, is Alana Bloom the reason you weren’t home last night? Sorry, Dr. Bloom,” he corrects as an afterthought, smirking over the top of his glass.

She rolls her eyes before flicking them onto her brother, conveying her annoyance. “What do you want, Mason? I’m busy,” she tries, just wanting him to leave her alone altogether. You’d think with him being CEO he’d actually take the position seriously and be very busy, but this _is_ Mason Verger.

“Hey, I can’t help it! I’m your protective big brother and I just want to know who my sister messes around with. Making sure she’s hopping into bed with the right kind of people,” he mumbles into his tumbler, tipping the rest of his whiskey back.

She knew this behavior was only going to progress into more crudeness with the help of alcohol. “Dr. Bloom and I are friends. No one is hopping into bed with anyone. Happy?” she huffs into a lie, stacking her papers up with a clack against the wood of her desk, emphasizing her words. She was willing to feed into his behavior only if it meant he would leave her alone. It was partially true, she hadn’t actually done anything with Alana last night. As if she needed to defend her private relationship with Alana for her brother. She owed her brother _nothing._

Her answer satisfies him nonetheless and he smirks to himself. “That’s what I like to hear. I know this constant worrying probably isn’t good for my mental health. Besides it’s not like anything would happen, I made sure of that,” he notes to himself victoriously, tossing the empty glass back onto the mini bar tray, the metal clattering loudly.

He pats his lower stomach to emphasis his point, as if Margot could ever forget what he took away from her. “Good day, Margot,” he tosses over his shoulder, slamming the door shut.

Margot lets out a sigh, rolling her aching shoulders a little. She couldn’t shake the disgusting feeling Mason constantly left her in with his revolting and slimy words. The only positive thing they left her with was a bigger ambition to actually get rid of him. She had internally accepted that Mason’s death would take a little longer, she was still caught up with helping Alana with Scarecrow’s demise. Alana was so close to getting closure with the masked villain last night but she herself had prevented it from actually happening, what if it happens again? What if they _never_ captured him? Margot didn’t know what she would do if Scarecrow wasn’t taken care of, all she knew was that she could absolutely not handle living in the same household with her sadistic brother for much longer.

 Sure, she had dreamed about running far away from the man who has abused her all her life, taking Alana and Applesauce along with her, but she knew Mason would catch up to them. He _always_ takes away the good things.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot opts to meet up with Alana at the FBI headquarters in her town car after both of their work shifts end, taking her girlfriend out for a much deserved dinner date at a quaint little French café uptown. She orders both their meals in impeccable French, swooping Alana off her feet. “What did I do to deserve you?” the older woman sighs happily into a glass of Chardonnay.

Smiling back at the other woman sitting across from her, Margot tangles their fingers together on top of the tablecloth as they wait for their food. “I don’t know but I’m so glad I decided to meet you on that rooftop that night,” she replies, using her other hand to prop up under her chin, smile still etched on her face.

Alana laughs softly, toying with the table cloth with her other hand. “We’re pretty keen on rooftops, huh?” she muses, playing with Margot’s fingers mindlessly. She could only hope to see and feel a ring on that hand in the near future.

“They’re our entrance,” she announces, raising her wine glass for a cheer chink.

“To our entrance,” Alana agrees, tipping her wine back after tapping the glass lightly with Margot’s.

“I have to tell you something,” Margot says after a few moments of comfortable silence, Alana paying attention to the flat screen TV above her head, currently playing the local news.

Alana’s eyes turn to lock with green, face etched in worry. “It’s nothing bad! Well, not yet,” Margot tries, clutching at Alana’s hands on the table. She uses one hand to press her palm to her face, sighing in frustration. “I’m not helping, am I?” she asks, voice muffled by her hand.

Alana shoots her a reassuring smile and brings their intertwined hands to her lips, skimming her lips across Margot’s knuckles. “Just tell me, Margot. It’s okay.”

“Mason…he….I think he’s onto us,” she mumbles, looking down to pick at the bread roll on her little appetizer plate.

“Onto what? Us as in us or the Scarecrow plan? Or his plan? Jesus, we have too many plans,” the other woman mutters under her breath, pulling a hand through her bangs in mock exhaustion.

It earns a giggle from Margot, toying with Alana’s feet under the table. “I mean us. I said you were my friend,” she says detachedly, looking down at the table once again. A warm touch to her hand causes her to look up, comforting blue eyes meeting her there.

“Hey, that’s okay. I want you to feel as safe as possible around him, so if that’s what you need to call us for the time being then that’s okay with me. We are friends, aren’t we? Or have you been tricking me this whole time? Oh great, where’s the cameras?” she asks in mock fear, looking all around the restaurant.

Margot tries to suppress her laugh but fails, her goofy girlfriend always knew how to make her laugh. “I think I got him off our backs for a little longer. About our plans though…I guess the real reason I wanted to treat you tonight was for last night. I feel like I caused…him to get away,” Margot admits, carefully considering her words in the crowded café.

With a squeeze to her hand, Alana silences her girlfriend. “You didn’t do anything wrong. He will be caught. Your brother will be taken care of,” she promises, raising her left pinky into the air.

Margot smiles at the sight, meeting the finger with her own to seal the promise. “I love you,” she says just as their food arrives to their table.

“And I love you, but right now this ratatouille is calling my name,” she says, already digging into her food which earns another giggle from the younger woman. Margot doesn’t know what she did to earn Alana Bloom to come into her life, but she finds herself forever grateful to whatever outside forces that caused their meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Mason is just vile. It only fuels my desire to kill him off ASAP as I type up his scenes with Margot. Rest assured his death scene will probably be very lengthy and graphic because he is just absolutely grotesque. I don't think I'll receive many complaints for that though. ;)


	8. the demise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batwoman and Nightwing team up for the demise of Scarecrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the inspiration for Batwoman's bat cave. These gifs (which are not mine, by the way) are really cool, they show the process of how Christopher Nolan's bat cave was built for his dark knight trilogy. The second to last picture is literally the splitting image of the bat cave I had in mind for this series.  
> http://formermaleprostitute.tumblr.com/post/36962856920

Margot had gotten used to the look of disbelief on Alana’s face once she dropped the news on her over a cup of coffee on one of their many lunch outings: They should lure Scarecrow to her bat cave.

“But _I_ haven’t even gotten to see this cave of yours,” the older woman says, pouting a little.

Margot reaches a hand over the table to squeeze her hand. “Come by after work, Mason will be out with Chilton tonight. I’ll pick you up after you get off work,” Margot promises, gathering her purse and dropping a few bills for the tip on the table before both women exit the coffeehouse and enter the town car waiting outside.

“Are we really doing this?” Alana asks, looking at the other woman’s face for clarity. The town car’s partition allowed for maximum privacy against their words.

Margot nods, absolutely sure of herself. She had thought about it a lot these past few days, as she lay in bed restless about their plans.

“Once we have him, the police will have to arrive to the scene. I can easily hide all of my Batwoman belongings in the cave with a press of a button, they won’t have to see a thing. We can pull it off as an attempted robbery, Scarecrow found the cave opening and crawled his way in. Then, we conveniently push him into the waterfall, making him fall all those stories. Perhaps you should do the pushing, it would only be fair,” Margot explains nonchalantly, skimming through emails on her phone.

She looks up to her girlfriend’s mouth agape, a look of incredulous disbelief. “Is that okay with you, dear?” she purrs teasingly, tapping Alana’s nose lightly.

“You have a waterfall?” Alana asks in disbelief, eyebrows raised.

Margot doesn’t answer right away, choosing to look out the car window, the car currently stopped at a stoplight. She observes the elementary public school across the street, children milling about on the enclosed playground. Alana watches the children play too, settling her hand on top of Margot’s on the leather seats with a reassuring squeeze. _A promise of their future_.

This causes the younger woman to look away and smile before answering her previous question. “I didn’t mention that before? Oh. Well yeah, I do. The cave leads to a watering sink hole with a waterfall built inside one of the cave walls. I’ll give you a tour later,” she promises with a kiss, dropping Alana off at the FBI headquarters.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot couldn’t help but practically skip to her hidden elevator inside her library, Alana tagging along behind her. “And you have a secret revolving bookshelf? I didn’t know it was possible to get anymore jealous than I am now,” she teases, poking a finger to Margot’s side on the ride down.

“It’ll be yours too. Soon,” Margot promises softly, Alana melting at her words. She can’t help but kiss her once they land down at the cave level, the younger woman breaking apart to open up the elevator gate.

“Here we are,” she announces, stepping out of the elevator onto the metal crate platform.

“And all I have under my apartment is some sewers,” Alana muses, looking up at the vast rocky cave walls, slick with the spraying water from the nearby waterfall. She walks over to the platform edge, gripping the metal railing as she looks down.

“How deep is it?” she asks, Margot coming up to stand beside her. “If you’re worried the water is too shallow, don’t be. Drowning won’t be a problem,” she promises, her hand resting on top of the older woman’s with a comforting squeeze.

Alana meets her knowing eyes with a smile, turning to look at her other belongings. “Has this place always had these cool toys of yours?” she asks, running a hand over the enclosed glass case that currently held Margot’s weapons and her suit.

“Not always, I’m afraid. This used to be a railroad shipping port for the family business. Cordell has helped me remodel it to better suit my needs. ”She looks over her GPS radar on her large computer monitor as Alana’s scuffles about behind her. According to Scarecrow’s tracker, he was currently in East Baltimore, a mere twenty minute drive from the Verger manor.

Alana observes the ancient remaining shipping tools, toying with a low crane hook and its rusty chain, admiring a piece of Verger history. “So, how are we going to lead the lamb to slaughter?” Alana asks, turning on her heel to look down into the misty abyss once again.

Margot clears her throat and gestures with a slight nod to her Batmobile parked on the platform closest to the cave opening. The women smirk, Alana reaching into her messenger bag for her suit and Margot unlocking the glass case to grab her own.

 

* * *

 

 

“Aren’t you worried we’re going to attract some unwanted police attention?” Nightwing yells into her earpiece, gripping the throttle of the borrowed Batcycle, revving the engine even louder. Batwoman was a few miles behind her, harboring Scarecrow. They had successful lured him in, tied with Nightwing’s escrima sticks and shoved in the trunk of the Batmobile.

“Don’t worry. According to my grids nearly all of the Baltimore Police Department is at the Chilton’s institution, thanks to your tip to the FBI,” Batwoman purrs coolly into her ear from the miniscule microphone.

Nightwing grins to herself, revving the engine a little more for Batwoman’s amusement. “You really like that bike, don’t you?” Batwoman’s voice crackles into her ear, Nightwing can hear the smile in it.

She turns the bike off the silent road and onto a mulchy path in the forestry off to the sides of the Verger estate. She sees the Batmobile’s headlights on her back, her shadow on the nearly all black ground. She hesitates for a moment once she nears the cave opening, masked with large trees and the loud roaring spray of water from the waterfall.

“Just drive on in, you’ll land on the platform,” Batwoman instructs into her ear, the car slowing up behind her. She revs the bike engine one more time before propelling herself forward, the water soaking her from head to toe as she lands a little ungraceful onto the platform. The wheels squeak with the slippery metal platform, but she rides over to the rightful parking spot for the bike to allow room for the Batmobile to land on the platform also.

She slides off the bike with a happy little sigh, rubbing away at the water on the seat for effect. “I’ll buy you your own,” Batwoman promises, easing out of her car and sauntering over to the back of the car, popping open the trunk.

“What the hell?” Batwoman starts before Nightwing joins her, looking down in disbelief at an empty trunk.

“Looking for something?” a robotic voice echoes off the walls of the cave, already attempting to dash over to the cave opening, Scarecrow’s heels pounding loudly on the metal walking platform.

Batwoman sighs heavily before chucking a batarang, the sharp metal meeting the flesh of his back, causing him to tumble to the ground. Nightwing practically skips on over to his crumbled body, hoisting him up roughly by the shoulder pads of his now rumpled suit. The chin of his straw mask was now absorbed with blood from his nasty fall on the crated platform. She opts to leave the batarang in his back, but remembers the police. She rips it out nice and slow, Scarecrow groaning with each breath as she pulls the metal out of his skin.

Ripping off his mask, he spits blood into Nightwing’s face. She simply tsks her tongue, pinning him to the metal railing behind him. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that,” she remarks, Batwoman walking over to dap away at the blood and saliva on her lover’s face with her cape.

“I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” he says, his jaw muscles clenching beneath tan skin.

Nightwing allows herself to look into Hannibal’s little brown eyes, not a single trace of fear in her eyes. “Likewise, but you kept running away from me. From both of us. Tonight you don’t get to run away like the coward you are,” she retorts back, taking one arm and Batwoman taking the other as they walk over to the large looming crane.

Batwoman helps place the crane hook under the back of his suit collar, ripping the fabric with the rusty sharp metal. “For good measure,” Nightwing purrs, walking over to grab some cable wire hanging on the cave wall by Batwoman’s tools. She loops it around his neck a couple times, not too tight to suffocate him but not too loose for him to worm his way free. She ties a weighted belt around his middle as well, assured that his body will stay down below water level. Hooking the crane under the wire and raising the chain higher, Nightwing looks up at Scarecrow, slightly swaying in the air.

“Look at you, now you do look like a real scarecrow! How does it feel to be the one to be propped up in the air now?” Nightwing asks, arms crossed with a smug smile.

“How does it feel to go against your own personal code of good and fair acts of justice?” he retorts back, his shiny brown loafers clicking together.

Nightwing sets her jaw, gritting her teeth. “You have no room to talk about good and fair practices, Doctor Lecter,” Batwoman replies coolly, coming up behind Nightwing’s body to settle her chin on the other woman’s shoulder. Nightwing returns the other woman’s smug smirk before turning away to the control panel of the crane.

“Alright Ms. Verger, how do I work this thing?” Nightwing asks quietly to her, both backs turned to the shackled villain. Although the equipment hadn’t been used in decades, Margot still remembered how to work the contraption. One of her few fond memories of childhood was her walks of exploration around the property. Her mother had eventually found her in her little hiding spot of the cave, desperate to get away from her tormentor of a brother. Her mother was not angry at her for venturing down into the cave, instead opting to give her a little Verger history lesson around the place. She had thoroughly explained all the remaining railroad tracks and cranes, as thorough as one can to a child’s brain, and how each part worked to ship out the cattle and pork meat to the rest of the world.

Batwoman wordlessly takes the other woman’s gloved hand, pressing their conjoined hands together on the largest lever to pull it across and then down. The crane jolts to life, shifting abruptly to the left, causing Hannibal to dangle over the spraying abyss.

Nightwing watches as Hannibal tries to shift his head down, accepting his plunge of death. She quickly moves both their hands down to shift the lever, causing the crane’s chain to drop over the edge and into the watery darkness. He does not scream, the only sound coming from the clattery metal of the rustic chain and the impact of a body hitting water. Nightwing walks over to the railing’s edge, looking into the black abyss, seeing only the upper part of the chain amidst the fog.

“There’s a lower platform over to your left, for the boat. I’ll help you with the body,” Batwoman promises, resting her hand on top of Nightwing’s gripping the railing.

Her grip lessens and she squeezes the other woman’s hand. “Thank you. For this,” she says, meeting the other woman’s eyes. Batwoman wordlessly removes the other woman’s eye mask gently, blue locking with green before both lips meet in a sweet kiss.

They wait a few more minutes, content with just holding each other and enjoying the silence. The silence is soon broken once a group of bats decide to shriek their way out of a small opening near the mouth of the cave, the little black bodies flying above them in a flurry.

“Do you have a Batplane?” Nightwing asks teasingly, but also a little curious. She hadn’t expected the Batboat but wasn’t surprised by Margot and her abundant toys.

“Yes, actually. It’s still in the process of being built but I’ll give you the first ride,” she promises with a smile, both of their hands intertwining as they descend down the platform stairs to unhook Hannibal’s lifeless body from the crane.

Nightwing has to swim out a little bit to grab his body, the chain bobbing in the pitch black water. His back was turned up, his face down in the chilly water. She paddles back to Batwoman over on the boat platform, hoisting his heavy dead weight up. The women work together to carefully unhook him and remove the cable wires around his neck and the weights off his middle, hiding the tools away in the cave walls and pushing his body into the cold water once again. Nightwing studies his dead body as Batwoman deals with docking the Batboat away in its concealed chamber in the rock wall, Batwoman pressing a button to shut the dock doors.

“Come on, we have to prepare for our police guests,” Batwoman says softly, grabbing the other woman’s hand and turning away from the dead body of Alana’s former friend, mentor, and lover. She does not say goodbye, opting to leave the dead body bobbing in the water for the police to find later.

They reach the top level of the metal walking platform, Margot removing her mask and shaking her hair out around her shoulders as Alana begins to strip off her own suit.

Just as she reaches for day clothes, stored in the built in shelves of the rock wall, a static message appears on Margot’s large computer monitor. “Ms. Verger, I’m sorry to inform you that your brother is aware of everything. I am so very sorry,” is all Cordell says before his eyes roll back into his head, his body convulsing rapidly.

Margot watches in horror as his lifeless body is shoved away from the camera’s view and her brother’s mutilated face shows up on the screen. “Hi there, baby sister. Or should I say… _Batwoman_ ,” he murmurs before erupting in a hysteric laugh, his green hair sticking up in all directions before scampering away from the camera.

Alana turns to the elevator shaft, the roar of the ancient gears moving as the elevator comes closer to the cave level. Batwoman doesn’t bother with her mask, her brother already knows. Alana walks over, already back into her Nightwing suit, and helps place her mask over her head.

As their eyes meet, Nightwing shoots the younger woman a reassuring smile. “It’s time you get what you want.” The moment is nearly ruined when the elevator gate bangs open with a clash, Mason sauntering out with his hands on his hips.

“Heeeeeeeeere’s Mason!” he yells, his voice echoing off the walls. With a squeeze to Nightwing’s hand, Batwoman turns her head to face her tormentor, armed and ready for attack.


	9. the fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batwoman and Nightwing take down Mason Verger for good and deal with its aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I reeeeeeally wanted to incorporate Mason's electric eel into this and wrote a whole disturbing paragraph about the eel and how it was involved with his demise but it was just way too disturbing. Even for me. Is it weird that I didn't want to hurt the eel, even though it is a totally fictional animal? Anyway, I'm satisfied with the newly edited version of Mason's death and I hope you all are too.

Batwoman’s first instinct is to chuck a batarang into her brother’s eye socket, so she does so, with perfect aim. Nightwing had been helping her perfect her aim. She doesn’t miss her train of target, but Mason ducks at the last second, lodging the weapon into the elevator wall behind him.

He pulls out his trusty cattle prod, already buzzing to life after being used heavily to kill Cordell upstairs. “Margot, Margot, Margot. Did you honestly think you could hide this from me? This little playpen of yours? It’s awfully dark in here, let’s light it up,” he proposes with a wild grin, charging at her like a raging bull. Nightwing gets to him before he gets to her, already zip-zagging behind him and knocking the electric rod out of his hands with a high kick, her heels digging into the weapon on the ground.

“Don’t destroy that just yet, I’ll need that for later,” Batwoman huffs into an order, grabbing a fist full of Mason’s green hair just as he approaches her and bashes his head against the rock wall behind her.

He clobbers to the ground, the skin of his forehead cut open like wet dog food, gushing vibrant red against his green hair. “Fun for later? I like fun,” he grunts teasingly, scooting back on his hands against the metal platform to try to hoist himself up with the railing.

Nightwing is already there, leaning against the railing nonchalantly. “Then you’re really going to like this,” she says, reaching down to quickly fasten his hands together with the wire of her escrima sticks before stepping aside for her partner to finish dealing with him.

Batwoman hoists her brother up by his suit jacket lapel, purple with green pinstripes, before pinning her hips roughly into his against the railing. “If you do plan on ending my life tonight, have fun living in the slums of Baltimore. You have nothing without me or an heir,” he spats into her face, blood dribbling down his severely wounded forehead and into his eyes.

“It’s thoughtful of you to discuss the possibility of producing another life just as yours ends,” the younger woman notes, cocking her head to the side to observe her brother’s mutilated face, more screwed up than usual. A batarang really would look nice in his eye right now.

“Thoughtful, but entirely unnecessary,” Nightwing notes into a sigh, removing her left glove to check her nails. Damn. Her red varnish on her left index finger was nearly chipped all the way to the nailbed.

Mason looks into his sister’s eyes skeptically, his eyes flickering to her stomach pressed against his. “But you can’t-“ he tries but Batwoman socks him hard in the jaw, preventing him from speaking. “There’s other ways I can have a baby, Mason. I’m very adaptable. You ought to be more like that, be a bit more flexible with your lifestyle,” she says just as she propels her knee up, kicking him square in the gut and sending him over the edge of the railing.

He clutches onto her leg with his bounded arms, sending her over the edge as well. She grabs onto the metal platform, fingers slipping on the wet material. Nightwing quickly bends down under the railing, grabbing onto to her lover’s arm to prevent her from falling into the foggy abyss. She wasn’t struggling, his grip was very loose due to his restraints. With one final hard kick to Mason’s chin, sending his head all the way back with a prominent snap, he slips off her leg and falls to the bottom of the abyss, landing on a large rock near the coast of the boat dock. A loud crack echoes off the walls, proving he had successfully chosen a rocky landing.

Nightwing carefully hoists Batwoman’s body up over the railing, wiping away at the blood of her brother from her face. “You wanna go down there to make sure he’s finished?”

Batwoman shakes her head as she takes off her mask, tossing it over to the computer monitor station. “Not just yet. I need to take care of one more thing,” she says, jogging over to pick up the cattle prod off the ground by the elevator. She twirls it in her hand so nonchalantly Alana thought she would break out into a whistle tune.

She watches as Margot digs around her tool box over by her weaponry area, finding a clear empty vial before descending down the boat dock steps. Alana trails after her, patting down her leg for her other escrima stick, tapping a button once she finds it to act as a source of light in the dim cave.

They find Mason’s body, draped like a ragdoll over a large rock off the coast of the boat dock with Hannibal’s dead body still bobbing in the water nearby. Margot hooks the cattle prod into her utility belt before dragging her brother over the cave gravel, not particular caring about being gentle. The rock that broke her brother’s fall had also successfully broken his spine.

Dropping to her knees, she roughly tugs off Mason’s expensive suit pants, drenched with blood and water. Alana shifts her weight awkwardly between feet, the pebbles crunching under her feet. “Have you done this before?” she asks as Margot searches for Mason’s prostate gland.

“The internet is scarily useful when you’re desperate for child without a uterus,” is all Margot says, finding what she was looking for before fumbling with both the empty vial and the cattle prod due to her gloves being slick with her brother’s blood. Alana rushes over to help her, popping the top off the vial and holding it as Margot zaps the last possibility of life out of the dead body. Satisfied with the amount of semen she forces out, she tugs his pants back up and nudges his body back into place, face buried into the ground so she wouldn’t have to look at his vacant eyes.

After destroying the weapon, they wordlessly trudge back up the steps to undress out of their night suits. Once all evidence is stored away, the pair ride back up to the house level to store away the semen in the freezer, hidden behind Mason’s tub of ice-cream: chocolate of course. Margot makes a mental note to toss that out once the police leave, getting rid of all traces of Mason out of the house.

Alana taps her nails rhythmically against the kitchen granite countertops, tapping out a few texts on her phone with her other hand before meeting her girlfriend’s eyes.

 “The FBI will be here shortly, Jack is wrapping up with Chilton at the asylum,” she explains before walking over to the other woman and wrapping her arms around her. Alana’s suit choice of the day was an all black number, oddly fitting for the lives they took that night.

“Won’t Commissioner Crawford be suspicious of you already being here?” she asks, tracing a single finger up and down the older woman’s jacket lapel.

Alana shakes her head, her slightly damp hair tickling Margot’s cheek. “The whole team is coming from the institution. It’s urgent. My body won’t be targeted in the swarm of officers.”

“The house will be a magnet for unwanted media attention. The Verger Estate Massacre,” she muses, already envisioning the Tattle Crime headline in her head.

“We should leave town for a little while, take a holiday. I’d say we deserve it. I’ve always wanted to go to Fiji,” Alana proposes softly, pressing a kiss to a brunette hairline. It’s a lovely thought, Margot can picture them on their honeymoon: The Verger yacht, cruising on tropical coasts the color of cerulean. Perhaps they could stop by Australia too. Maybe they could just take a whole journey to all types of places, introducing both Alana and their future child to different cultures.

“I’d like that. I’ll talk to the captain of the Verger yacht about that,” she agrees, tightening her hold around her lover’s waist a little more, Alana’s chin comfortably on top of the crown of her head.

“Of course there is a Verger yacht,” the other woman notes amusedly, rubbing her cheek fondly against Margot’s hair.

“How does the Verger-Bloom yacht sound?” Margot asks, heart clenching in her chest just for a moment. She had indulged in daydreams about her mother’s ring on Alana’s finger and a winter wedding, ivory everywhere.

Alana shifts her head to lock eyes with the other woman’s, cradling her chin gently in her hand. “I’d like that,” she murmurs against soft lips, completely clean of lipstick. Margot makes a mental notes to dig around her jewelry box upstairs for her mother’s ring, the only thing she has of the woman that wasn’t taken or destroyed by her brother, before the police arrive and set up a search warrant.

Jack arrives shortly and Margot answers the door, Alana already sneaking out of the house and amongst the swarm of police officers lit up in the front yard.

Margot explains her ordeal, Alana had previously coached her on what she should say: She had arrived home to Cordell’s dead body upstairs before looking all around the property for her brother’s help. The last place she thought to look was the cave, due to it being inhabitable for decades.

She takes the team outside through the waterfall entrance, they didn’t need to know about her incognito elevator. They find the bodies, placed nearly side by side together. Jack interviewed her as to why Mason and Dr. Lecter were so enamored with each other and she explained all about her brother’s quest for the masked villain, dropping Chilton’s name as well. Just because she could. She overheard pretty much all of their pathetic meetings anyway.

The police leave and a search warrant is filed, Margot preparing a bag of clothes and few belongings for her temporary stay in the penthouse suite at the Verger Tower. She hesitates by the door as the department team loads up, Commissioner Crawford and Alana talking in hushed tones by the door.

“Thanks for coming in on your night off, Alana. We need all the help we can get on this case. I can’t imagine what she’s going through, coming home to this? My God,” he huffs, running a hand down his haggard face.

Alana nods in agreement, subtly watching Margot out of the corner of her eye. She was bending down to gather her bags, bending a little more than necessary on purpose but it made Alana smirk and blush at the sight nonetheless. She offers to give her a ride over to the tower, making a note to call her Ms. Verger in front of Jack. Proper and appropriate titles for a mere friend.

 

* * *

 

 

The elevator ride up to the penthouse suite was silent, the whole tower had been eerily silent. She would have to get used to that, now that Mason was gone and out of the business for good. Perhaps this work environment would be a lot less stressful.

Alana allows herself to get tugged in through the suite door, Margot tossing her bags off to the side. The older woman follows her lead to the large glass chamber shower, scrubbing the effects of the night off their battered bodies. Alana wraps herself in a plushy robe before Margot sets up their bath in the large Jacuzzi tub, setting the right jet speeds and water temperature before tossing in a bath bomb. The scent of lilacs.

Margot is already getting comfortable in the tub, Alana satisfied with her rinse in the shower and settling to her knees to help wash the other woman’s hair. Margot tugs on her robe sleeve, stopping her movements. “Get in with me. Please,” is all she says and her lover is already slipping the robe off and sliding into warm water.

They help thoroughly wash each other off before Alana settles her body in front of Margot’s spread legs, slick breasts meeting her bruised back, allowing herself to be held in a comforting embrace. They sit like this for a while, the sounds of the noisy city of the night outside muffled by the thick soundproof walls.

“I can still feel him on me,” Margot says softly, breaking the silence.

Alana nods, understanding the other woman’s words completely. “It’ll probably take some time for them to really feel gone. Both of them,” she replies, slipping her hand underwater to rub soothingly at the other woman’s kneecap.

“Come on, we’re getting all pruney,” Alana says, helping the other woman up and into her robe. Margot takes her time getting dressed in pajamas, letting her girlfriend borrow one of her long shirts for bed before cuddling up together for much needed rest.

 

* * *

 

 

Margot awakes to a burst of light behind her closed eyes, prompting her to groan and bury her face into the pillow beside her. She only opens them once she realizes there’s no familiar warm skin resting on said pillow, only the scent of Alana’s hair left behind.

“Oh good. You finally decide to greet the world with your presence,” Alana says amusedly, turning from the large skyline windows to grin at the other woman buried in the sheets.

“Bats are nocturnal,” she grumbles, stretching her aching muscles.

“Hate to break it to your sweetheart, but night is approaching,” the older woman murmurs, leaving the sunset to saunter back over to the bed and plopping her body down comfortably.

“I really did sleep all day?” Margot asks incredulously, fumbling over for the clock on the bedside table. The clock read 6:56 PM.

Alana nods, settling next to her girlfriend and wrapping her body around the other warm body, arms draped over her middle and legs tucked in-between the other. “You deserved sleep more than anyone, so I let you. I woke up early though and enjoyed my day off by doing some grocery shopping for you. There’s mac and cheese waiting for you out in the kitchen,” she offers, nuzzling her nose into Margot’s warm neck.

Margot wrinkles her nose at the thought of frozen mac and cheese, she had never indulged in the simple comfort food before. Alana shushes her with a tap to the nose. “You will eat it and enjoy it,” she promises, locking her pinky with the other woman’s before tugging her out of bed to cook her meal.

She couldn’t believe how _simple_ this felt: Alana humming happily over a tray of macaroni and cheese, preparing a plate for her as Margot sits comfortably on a barstool. Alana had already eaten, so she’s content with just skimming through some random coffee table book and playing with Margot’s feet under the kitchen bar countertop as she eats.

“I’m going to have to get used to this. How…normal this is. It just feels…so right,” she muses aloud, moving her fork around her nearly clean plate.

The older woman looks up from the art book with a smile, leaning over to give Margot a little kiss. “And it can feel like this. _Forever_.”

 

* * *

 

 

Both woman opt for just lounging in bed, listening to fuzzy old records on the record player and holding each other in the dim light. The city’s neon lights from outside reflecting beautifully off Alana’s pale complexion, Margot couldn’t stop skimming her hands up and down her arms, currently wrapped around her middle as Alana spooned her from behind.

The younger woman’s eyes flutter shut once Alana presses gentle little kisses to the scars on her exposed back, shifting her tank top straps a little for better access. A promise that no one will cause anymore scars on her body.

Margot was overcome with the love and adoration the other woman poured out from her soft lips and onto her body, desperate to show much she equally adored the other woman. She moves her head from the pillow, her neck straining to meet Alana’s lips from over her shoulder. With a little tug on Alana’s arm, the older woman is forced to hover over her body and carefully avoids pressing her full weight down onto the body below her. Margot whines a little into Alana’s neck, pressing little kisses there. “I want to feel you,” she murmurs into the warm skin, wrapping her legs around Alana’s bare exposed ones to shift her full weight down against her front.

Alana shifts her head, blue meeting green. “Are you sure?”

Margot nods, she hadn’t been more certain of anything else. Clothes are shed, skin becomes flushed with the best possible heat, and desperate kisses are pressed on every inch of Margot’s skin.

“Tell me if I should stop and I will,” Alana promises into the warm skin of her inner thigh before a little shift of her head and Margot has to clench the bedsheets. Alana lets her moan and scream as loud as she wants, all levels of the Verger Tower was barren due to the late hour.

Once Margot catches her breath, Alana gently brushing her tousled hair away from her sweaty face before the younger woman looks over to her, her bare chest panting softly. “So that’s what all the fuss is about,” she purrs into dark tresses of hair, Alana giggling as Margot presses little kisses under her prominent jawline before moving her kisses even further, Alana positioning her elbows on the bed to watch.

Margot was so soft and warm against her, so unlike her previous lovers with all their rough pounding. She was so gentle she almost couldn’t handle it, tipping her head back in ecstasy against the pillows and sending one hand fumbling to grip the headboard, the other to Margot’s shoulder.

“Where’d you learn how do to that?” Alana huffs afterwards, Margot settling behind her and tugging the sheets around their bare bodies.

She smirks before dropping a kiss to her exposed shoulder. “The internet is scarily useful sometimes,” she murmurs against the shell of Alana’s ear, her hot breath puffing there causing a soft little moan to erupt from the other woman’s lips.

Alana stifles a yawns and settles her body in warm familiar arms, Margot skimming her hands up and down the other woman’s exposed arms.

“I love you,” she sleepily mumbles into the edge of the pillow, Margot sighing happily into her hair.

“And I love you,” she replies with a quick peck to the back of her neck, hands intertwining by Alana’s waist. She fondles the other woman’s left ring finger, already envisioning her proposal. She sleeps content with the love of her life in her arms and her engagement ring tucked away safely in its rightful ring box inside her nearby suitcase.


	10. the reconstruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set four years after the Verger Estate Massacre, Margot reminiscences about the positive aftermath of the event.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted this chapter to feature one character tied with some type of relation to the DC comic world of Batman, so I was torn between naming the Verger baby either Bruce or Thomas. Thomas won, RIP Thomas Wayne. <3

Margot had gotten accustomed these past few weeks to waking up to a soft breeze coming in from the master suite’s sliding doors, leading out to the yachts’ balcony. She was itching to just go out and bask in the sun, nothing beat Morocco’s heat. Baltimore’s weather was pathetic in comparison. The Verger-Bloom family was currently vacationing up and down the Mediterranean Sea, passing through the Strait of Gibraltar in-between Spain and Morocco and then lodging in the family French villa once they reached France.

Her thoughts are broken once a warm body presses against hers, Alana murmuring sleepily as she cuddles closer to her wife. “How are you already awake? I thought bats were supposed to be nocturnal,” Alana mumbles into a tease, nuzzling her nose into brown hair.

Margot smiles into her wife’s nearly black hair, winding her arms around her shoulders, exposed from her pajama tank top. “I am no longer a bat,” she muses, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

“Do I still get to be a bird?” Alana asks, voice muffled a little by the other woman’s skin of her neck.

“No. you get to be-“ Margot starts before their son Thomas storms into the room, clobbering into the bedroom.

“Mommy!” he squeals, hurling himself onto the bed. With a huff, Alana breaks his fall.

“Thomas, who let you have caffeine this early?” Margot says with a tsk of her tongue, reaching over to squeeze him into an embrace as Alana grumbles.

“Sorry Mama, I’m just excited about the tooth fairy!” he says with a grin, one of his front teeth missing.

“The tooth fairy should’ve put a little more sleeping fairy dust onto your pillow,” Alana mumbles into her son’s cheek, pressing a kiss there and ruffling his light brown hair.

He giggles and squirms out of her grasp and into his other mother’s arms, wrapping around his little body. “Don’t listen to her, your mommy’s just being grumpy because you interrupted her beauty sleep,” she murmurs into his ear, nuzzling her cheek against his own.

“But mommy doesn’t need any more of that, she’s already pretty,” he interjects, patting a little hand to Alana’s pale cheek, bare of makeup. Both mothers lose it at their son’s sweet words, smothering him with coos and kisses as he squirms from the attack of affection.

Applesauce interrupts this cuddle party by hopping onto the bed, shaking her whole body and causing salt water to drip all over them. Margot shrieks in disgust and surprise, but Alana and Thomas burst into laughter.

“Alright, T! Time for a spontaneous morning swim party!” she proposes, hoisting the boy up in her arms to help change him into his swim trunks. Margot opts to stay behind, stripping the sheets to give to the maid to wash later.

She tightens her silk robe as she walks over to the large kitchen cabin, stocked with all kinds of high-end kitchen appliances and a well-stocked bar. Breakfast was already prepared of course, but her wife and child had decided to skip on this altogether for their morning swim. She opts for a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed, and a croissant as she walks over to the kitchen balcony to watch her family play in the water.

The patio side table already had her morning essentials waiting for her: her sunglasses and the most recent issue of Tattle Crime. She had an anonymous subscription to the newspaper to keep up with daily events in Baltimore, due to the Verger-Bloom’s long absence from the city. They had been vacationing for a week and half so far, and planned to vacation a little longer. Just because. Alana sometimes thinks the holiday is a bit excessive but Margot persuades her, in more ways than one, that out of all people they deserved a nice lengthy vacation. They certainly had the means to do it.

The Verger Estate Massacre was news of the past, it feels like forever ago rather than just four years. Freddie Lounds had moved onto to bigger and better things. Baltimore’s crime had significantly died down ever since the two guardians of the night took down Scarecrow and Mason that fateful evening in the cave, only few petty crimes here and there. The Baltimore Police Department could handle that, Margot and Alana had long since hung up their suits and toys for good.

Sometimes Margot misses it. Sometimes Alana _really_ misses it. Looking out into the water, the crystal blue water shimmering in the sun as her wife teaches their son how to swim, float devices intact on his little arms as Applesauce paddles around him in circles, she decides she doesn’t miss her nightly activities at all. She already had all that she could possibly want and need right here.

 

* * *

 

 

They stay at the French villa for another week before work calls her back to Baltimore. She had renamed all the Verger Enterprises and its branches to Verger-Bloom shortly after the wedding of the century, as Tattle Crime had reported.

They live a quiet life on the family estate, the journalists no longer hassling them after the event died down. Both women appreciated that, they only craved normalcy for their son and wanted him to live in no fear in his home. Margot had endured enough of that in her life and she would continue ensuring that her little boy was safe, happy, and loved.

It’s a tradition that the family take little walks around the expansive property after dinner, Margot loves watching Thomas play in the leaves with Applesauce as Alana has her arms wrapped around her. Even after four years she still felt butterflies in her stomach when those blue eyes meet hers, a hand wrapping around hers in a comforting squeeze. She teaches her son how to ride horses on these walks, he even has his own little pony with his own little chamber in the stables.

She shows her son all the parts of the mansion, explaining its history just like her mother had all those years ago. Alana was a bit hesitant on showing the cave to their child, remembering the events that happened there. _What they did for each other_. They don’t tell him the horrors that took place there all those years ago. They will have to eventually, his friend’s parents are bound to remember the event when they see his last name. They save that story for another day, when he is much older, mature, and wiser.

Margot hadn’t disposed all of her weapons and vehicles, they were locked away behind the cave walls, collecting dust. It felt wasteful to get rid of them. She preferred to hold onto the nostalgia the materials had, Alana liked reminiscing about them too.

On the walk back upstairs to tuck their son into bed, he holds onto each mother’s hands and tells them all about his favorite parts of the house and Margot is partially grateful the cave isn’t on his list.

 

* * *

 

 

The women go out for dinner, leaving the estate assured their son was tucked in happy and safe with the staff on hand at the manor. Margot decided to take her wife out to Italian restaurant uptown, located in the business district in one of tallest skyscrapers in the city. Well, next to the Verger-Bloom Tower of course.

They enjoy a plate of pasta, Alana proposing with a grin they should reenact the Lady and the Tramp scene. “Maybe later,” Margot says, looking out the large skyline window over the rim of her wine glass.

 “Everything okay? I’m sorry, we don’t have to do the Lady and the Tramp thing. I know you don’t like balls in your face,” Alana rambles, prompting a little stomp on her toe under the table from Margot.

“Kidding! Only kidding. What’s on your mind?” she tries instead, reaching a hand across the table to take the other woman’s in apology. Margot knew she was only trying to make her laugh, it was just fun to tease Alana right back with her unamused expression. She liked keeping the other woman on edge, making her very much whipped wife win back her affection.

“The city. It’s pretty at night. From up here at least,” she notes, playing with the other woman’s fingers as she observes the neon lights of the city.

Alana hums in agreement, they knew better than anyone that the rooftops allowed for greater views of Baltimore. “I think sometimes the night lets us see things better than they do in the day.”

Margot’s eyes lock with blue, breaking away from the window. She loved that her wife, _her equal_ , was on the same wavelength as her. It was a comforting feeling to know someone else on this planet understood you completely.

“At least now what was hiding in the night is no longer hidden,” she says with a knowing smile, enclosing her hand around Alana’s knuckles on top of the tablecloth.

“To the city of the dead,” Alana proposes, using her other hand to tap her wine glass into Margot’s for a cheer.

As the women tip back the rest of their expensive wine, Margot processes Alana’s words. They may live in the city of the dead and even be the cause behind the deaths, but they were the keepers of it. There was nothing more lively than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an affinity for the number 10, it's just a nice easy number. I really feel like this series has concluded and wrapped up in the way I wanted so I just don't think I could continue this any further. I had already envisioned these millionaire murder wives ending ever since the planning process of this series, so I'm really content with this conclusion and I hope you all like it too. Also: this may be the last you hear from me on this end for a while, I am all maxed out on Marlana, I just don't have anymore ideas planned for future stories. :( Thanks to anyone who left a kudos, commented, or just simply read a sentence. That really means a lot that you cared enough to read this weird little story! <3


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